Class 11 English 2024 Edition www.tntextbooks.in · Section 190

First, listen to a reading of the complete poem. Then, read silently and try to answer the questions briefly, based on your understanding. You may refer to the glossary given at the end of the monologue to help you. Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs, Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth. Let’s choose executors and talk of wills. And yet not so – for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives, and all, are Bolingbroke’s, And nothing can we call our own but death; And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings: How some have been depos’d, some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed, Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d, All murdered – for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and, humour’d thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence; throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty; For you have but mistook me all this while. I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends – subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king?  Pick out the phrase that suggests that King Richard was sorrowful.  Why does the king suggest that it is now time for his will to be executed?  What is the only thing we bequeath to our descendants?  What are the vanquished men left with?  What does the ‘small model’ refer to here?  What does a monarch’s crown symbolize?  What mocks the ruler’s power and pomp? -B-Poem-The Hollow - - :