NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 Travel (poem) — Let us discuss

Book page 159 & 160 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

The main ideas of each stanza of the poem are given below. Write the number of the stanza against the matching main idea. 1. At night, the speaker imagines the train and hears its engine in the quiet. 2. The speaker feels a strong desire to take any train, no matter where it goes. 3. The speaker hears the train whistle during the day, even though the train is far away.

Answer

Main idea	Stanza	The lines that prove it
1. At night, the speaker imagines the train and hears its engine in the quiet.	Stanza 2	“All night there isn't a train goes by… But I see its cinders red on the sky, / And hear its engine steaming.”
2. The speaker feels a strong desire to take any train, no matter where it goes.	Stanza 3	“Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, / No matter where it's going.”
3. The speaker hears the train whistle during the day, even though the train is far away.	Stanza 1	“The railroad track is miles away… Yet there isn't a train goes by all day / But I hear its whistle shrieking.”

Notice the plan of the poem: stanza 1 is day, stanza 2 is night, stanza 3 is always. The first two show that the train is with her at every hour; the third tells us what she would do about it if she could.

Q2.

Read the poem and underline the rhyming words in each stanza. Write the rhyming words from each stanza. An example has been done for you. 1. Stanza (i): away-day; 2. Stanza (ii): 3. Stanza (iii):

Answer

Stanza	Rhyming pairs
Stanza (i)	away – day; speaking – shrieking
Stanza (ii)	by – sky; dreaming – steaming
Stanza (iii)	make – take; knowing – going

Two rhymes in every stanza: lines 1 and 3 rhyme with each other, and lines 2 and 4 rhyme with each other. That is why the poem moves in a rocking, regular way — very like the sound of a train on the rails.

Tip: The second rhyme in each stanza always ends in -ing — speaking / shrieking, dreaming / steaming, knowing / going. That soft repeated ending gives the poem its dreamy, unfinished feeling, as though the longing never stops.

Q3.

Identify the rhyme scheme of the poem from the options given below. 1. AABB 2. ABCA 3. ABAB 4. ABBC

Answer

3. ABAB

The railroad track is miles away, ......... A
And the day is loud with voices speaking, ......... B
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day ......... A
But I hear its whistle shrieking. ......... B

The same pattern holds in the other two stanzas: by – dreaming – sky – steaming and make – knowing – take – going.

How to work out a rhyme scheme: Give the first line's sound the letter A. Every later line that rhymes with it also gets A. The first line with a new sound gets B, and so on. Here the sounds alternate, so the scheme is ABAB.

Q4.

Identify the word in the poem that personifies the whistle of the train.

Answer

“shrieking” — “But I hear its whistle shrieking.”

Why it is personification: To shriek is to give a loud, sharp, frightened or excited cry — something a person does. A machine only makes a noise. By calling the whistle a shriek, the poet gives the train a human voice, as though it were calling out to her across all those miles.

Look for the same trick elsewhere in the unit: in The Tunnel the engine “roared a challenge to the jungle”, the trees “seemed to flinch”, and the forest “seemed to breathe, to live again”. All of these are personification.

Q5.

Answer

The best choices are excited, enthusiastic and thoughtful — with content fitting the opening of the last stanza.

Word	Does it fit?	Why
excited	Yes	The whistle, the red cinders and the eagerness to board any train are the language of excitement.
enthusiastic	Yes	“There isn't a train I wouldn't take” — unconditional eagerness.
thoughtful	Yes	She weighs her warm friendships against her longing before deciding — that is reflection, not impulse.
content	Partly	True of “My heart is warm with the friends I make”, but the poem does not end in contentment — it ends in longing.
curious	Weakly	She never asks where the train is going; the destination does not interest her.
serious / worried / critical	No	There is no anxiety, no complaint and no judgement anywhere in the poem.
joyful	Not quite	The feeling is longing rather than joy — she wants to go, and has not gone.

Tip: When a question offers a box of tone words, choose two or three and defend each with a line from the poem. A single word rarely covers a whole poem.

Q6.

Select the words that tell us what the train symbolises for the poet. 1. education 2. adventure 3. comfort 4. opportunities

Answer

2. adventure and 4. opportunities

Adventure — the train stands for the excitement of setting out into the unknown. “There isn't a train I wouldn't take, / No matter where it's going.”
Opportunities — every passing train is a chance she has not taken, a life she could have led. The track is “miles away”, so the trains represent all the possibilities just out of her reach.

Why not 1 or 3: The poem says nothing about learning or schooling (1). And a train is certainly not comfort (3) for her — comfort is what she already has at home, with her warm friendships. The train is what would take her away from comfort.

Q7.

Complete the following by choosing the correct option from those given in brackets. The poet repeats the line, ‘...there isn't a train goes by,' in all three stanzas to _______. (highlight the speaker's fascination with the train/suggest that the area has many trains passing through)

Answer

… highlight the speaker's fascination with the train.

Why: The repetition is not a fact about traffic — it is a fact about her mind. Read the lines: “there isn't a train goes by all day / But I hear its whistle”, “All night there isn't a train goes by… But I see its cinders”, “there isn't a train I wouldn't take”. Every single train, by day or by night, catches her attention. The line comes back three times because the thought comes back to her endlessly.

Name the device: A line or phrase repeated at intervals in a poem is called a refrain. Here the refrain works like the repeated clatter of wheels — you cannot get away from it, and neither can she.

Q8.

The poem contrasts the busy day with the stillness of the night. What is the common factor in these?

Answer

The common factor is the train — and the speaker's constant awareness of it.

The day is “loud with voices speaking” and the night is “still for sleep and dreaming”. The two could not be more different. Yet in both, one thing reaches her:

By day, above all the human voices, she hears the whistle shrieking.
By night, in the silence, she sees the cinders red on the sky and hears the engine steaming.

What this proves: Neither noise nor silence, neither work nor sleep, can shut the train out. Her longing to travel does not depend on the hour — it is always with her. That is why the third stanza can say “there isn't a train I wouldn't take” without any surprise.

Q9.

Imagery is a literary device that uses descriptive language to create mental pictures and appeal to the reader's senses (sight, sound, smell, taste and touch). It makes the descriptions more relatable. Select the phrases from the poem that are examples of imagery. One example is given: day is loud.

Answer

Phrase from the poem	Sense it appeals to
“the day is loud with voices speaking” (the given example)	Sound
“I hear its whistle shrieking”	Sound
“the night is still for sleep and dreaming”	Sound (silence) and touch/feeling
“I see its cinders red on the sky”	Sight — and colour
“hear its engine steaming”	Sound (and sight of steam)
“My heart is warm with the friends I make”	Touch — warmth
“The railroad track is miles away”	Sight — distance and space

Why the imagery is so effective here: The strongest images are of things the speaker could not really see or hear from miles away — a whistle over a loud day, red cinders in the sky. The poet uses imagery to show us not the railway but her imagination. We are seeing what she pictures, not what is there.

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