Several, of which the clearest are: “The street was wet with a recent snow” — w as, w et, w ith. “Should crowd her down in the slippery street” — s lippery, s treet. “So meek, so timid, afraid to stir” — s o, s o, s tir. “Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!” — s omebody's, s on. What it does here: alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words. The hissing s sounds cluster exactly where the poem describes the woman's fear and the slippery road — the sound itself is thin, cold and unsteady, which suits the moment.

The poem repeats deliberately in three places: “somebody's mother” — used by the boy (“She's somebody's mother, boys, you know”) and then by the poet in the last stanza (“And ‘somebody's mother' bowed low her head”). It is also the title. The list of her qualities, re-ordered each time — “old and ragged and grey”, “aged and poor and slow”, “poor and old and grey”. The same three ideas keep returning, like a refrain. “so meek, so timid” — the repeated so intensifies without adding a new word. Why the re-ordering matters: the poet does not repeat the exact phrase. She shuffles it. That is how speech actually works when someone keeps circling back to the same thought — and it keeps the reader's attention on the woman's condition without the lines becoming mechanical.

NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 2 Somebody's Mother — Let us discuss

Book page 73 & 74 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Arrange the events of the poem in the correct order of occurrence. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher. 1. The boy returned to his friends, feeling proud of what he had done. 2. The old woman stood alone at the crossing, hesitant to move. 3. A group of schoolboys passed by, playing, and laughing. 4. The boy offered to help the old woman cross the street. 5. The woman prayed for the boy who helped her. 6. The children hurried past the old woman without offering help. 7. The woman placed her hand on the boy's arm, and he guided her safely across the street. 8. The boy thought about his own mother and hoped someone would help her one day.

Answer

The correct order is 2 → 3 → 6 → 4 → 7 → 1 → 8 → 5.

Order	Event	The line in the poem
1	(2) The old woman stood alone at the crossing	“She stood at the crossing and waited long, / Alone, uncared for, amid the throng”
2	(3) A group of schoolboys passed by, playing and laughing	“Down the street, with laughter and shout… Came the boys like a flock of sheep”
3	(6) The children hurried past without offering help	“Hastened the children on their way. / Nor offered a helping hand to her”
4	(4) The boy offered to help her cross	“He paused beside her and whispered low, / ‘I'll help you cross, if you wish to go.’”
5	(7) She placed her hand on his arm and he guided her across	“Her aged hand on his strong young arm / She placed… He guided the trembling feet along”
6	(1) The boy returned to his friends, proud	“Then back again to his friends he went, / His young heart happy and well content.”
7	(8) He thought of his own mother	“And I hope some fellow will lend a hand / To help my mother, you understand”
8	(5) The woman prayed for the boy that night	“And ‘somebody's mother' bowed low her head / In her home that night, and the prayer she said”

The one place students slip: events 1 and 8. It is tempting to think the boy remembered his mother while he was helping her — but the poem puts the thought after he rejoins his friends. That matters: the kindness came first and the reason came second. He did not calculate, and then act; he acted, and then explained himself to his friends.

Q2.

Fill in the blanks by choosing the correct answer from the options given in the brackets. 1. The central theme of the poem is _____________. (kindness and empathy/adventure and courage)

Answer

kindness and empathy

Why: nothing dangerous or unknown happens in this poem — no journey, no risk, no discovery. What happens is that one person notices another. Empathy is the right word rather than mere kindness, because the boy does not simply do a good deed; he imagines himself into her situation by seeing his own mother in her.

Q3.

2. The tone of the poem is _____________. (humorous and playful/sympathetic and hopeful)

Answer

sympathetic and hopeful

Why: the first half is sympathetic — “Alone, uncared for”, “anxious eyes”, “so meek, so timid” all invite the reader's pity. The second half turns hopeful: the boy's act, his wish for his own mother, and the woman's prayer end the poem on a rising note. There is warmth in the poem (“the merry troop”, “the gayest laddie”) but no joke — so it is not humorous.

Tip: a poem's tone is often best described in two words, because most poems change direction somewhere. Here the turn comes at “At last came one of the merry troop”.

Q4.

3. The poem is written in couplets with _____________ lines in each stanza. (four/two)

Answer

two

Why: a couplet is a pair of lines that rhyme together — couple and couplet come from the same root. The poem is built entirely of such pairs: “grey / day”, “snow / slow”, “long / throng”. Although the poem is printed in blocks of four lines on the page, each block is made of two couplets, and the rhyme falls in twos.

Q5.

4. The structure of the poem gives a rhythmic flow that reflects both the _____________. (narrative and emotions/story's pace and message)

Answer

narrative and emotions

Why: the steady march of couplets does two jobs at once. It carries the narrative forward — each pair of lines advances the story one step, like a person taking one step at a time across a street. And it holds the emotion steady, so that the poem never becomes sentimental: even the woman's prayer is delivered in the same calm two-line beat as everything else.

Read it aloud to hear this. The rhythm is a walking rhythm. In a poem whose whole action is a slow walk across a road, that is not a coincidence.

Q6.

5. The poem follows a rhyme scheme of _____________. (AABB/ABAB)

Answer

AABB

The woman was old and ragged and grey — A
And bent with the chill of the Winter's day. — A
The street was wet with a recent snow — B
And the woman's feet were aged and slow. — B

Why it suits this poem: in AABB the rhyme closes immediately, line after line. Nothing is held in suspense. That plainness matches a poem which tells a simple, moral story in the manner of a ballad meant to be read aloud — and it is the reason the poem sounds almost like a nursery rhyme even though its subject is old age and neglect.

Q7.

Pick examples from the poem for the following poetic devices. 1. Simile

Answer

“Came the boys like a flock of sheep”

How it works: a simile compares two unlike things using like or as. The comparison here is doing real work, not decoration. A flock moves as one body, in the same direction, at the same speed, without any single sheep deciding anything. That is exactly how the boys pass the old woman — not cruelly, but unthinkingly, because nobody in a flock stops.

Which makes the next moment sharper: “At last came one of the merry troop.” One sheep steps out of the flock. The simile is what gives that line its force.

Q8.

2. Alliteration

Answer

Several, of which the clearest are:

“The street was wet with a recent snow” — was, wet, with.
“Should crowd her down in the slippery street” — slippery, street.
“So meek, so timid, afraid to stir” — so, so, stir.
“Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!” — somebody's, son.

What it does here: alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words. The hissing s sounds cluster exactly where the poem describes the woman's fear and the slippery road — the sound itself is thin, cold and unsteady, which suits the moment.

Q9.

3. Repetition

Answer

The poem repeats deliberately in three places:

“somebody's mother” — used by the boy (“She's somebody's mother, boys, you know”) and then by the poet in the last stanza (“And ‘somebody's mother' bowed low her head”). It is also the title.
The list of her qualities, re-ordered each time — “old and ragged and grey”, “aged and poor and slow”, “poor and old and grey”. The same three ideas keep returning, like a refrain.
“so meek, so timid” — the repeated so intensifies without adding a new word.

Why the re-ordering matters: the poet does not repeat the exact phrase. She shuffles it. That is how speech actually works when someone keeps circling back to the same thought — and it keeps the reader's attention on the woman's condition without the lines becoming mechanical.

Q10.

Complete the following sentences appropriately explaining the imagery. 1. The poem uses imagery to describe scenes of a bustling street. We know this by the phrase _______________________.

Answer

… by the phrase “amid the throng / Of human beings who passed her by”.

Why this phrase: a throng is a densely packed crowd. The phrase does two things at once — it fills the street with people, and it makes those people move past her. The busyness and the neglect are contained in the same image, which is why the poet chose it rather than simply saying “the street was crowded”.

Other acceptable phrases: “Down the street, with laughter and shout”; “the carriage wheels or the horses' feet”. Any of these shows a street full of movement and noise.

Q11.

2. The line ‘The street was wet with a recent snow’ suggests a cold and _______________________ weather, emphasising the woman's helplessness.

Answer

… a cold and wet, slippery weather, emphasising the woman's helplessness.

Why “slippery” is the exact word: the poet supplies it herself a few lines later — the woman is afraid to stir “Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet / Should crowd her down in the slippery street”. Melting snow is worse than fresh snow: it is not pretty, it is treacherous underfoot. For a woman whose feet are “aged and slow”, that turns an ordinary crossing into a real danger.

Notice the contrast: for the boys, the same snow is a pleasure — they come “Hailing the snow piled white and deep”. One street, one snowfall, two completely different experiences. That is the poem's whole argument in a single image.

Q12.

Complete the following sentence with a suitable reason. The poet repeats the phrase Somebody's mother because it _______________________.

Answer

… because it changes a nameless old woman into a person who belongs to someone — and so makes the reader's duty towards her personal rather than general.

How the repetition works across the poem. The phrase is spoken twice. First by the boy, explaining himself to his friends: “She's somebody's mother, boys, you know.” Then by the poet, in the final stanza: “And ‘somebody's mother' bowed low her head.” By that point the poet is using the boy's own words as the woman's name. He has renamed her, and the poem agrees with him.

And why “somebody's” and not a name. Had the poet called her Mrs. Hall, she would have been one particular woman. Left as “somebody's mother”, she can be anybody's mother — including the reader's. The vagueness is the point.

Other correct completions: “…because it reminds us that every stranger is loved by someone, just as our own mother is”; “…because it links the old woman with the boy's mother and turns pity into fellow-feeling”.

Q13.

Complete the analogy: The old woman: vulnerable and neglected :: The young boy: _______________________.

Answer

The young boy: compassionate and thoughtful (also acceptable: kind and considerate; strong and helpful).

How to build the second half of an analogy: look at what the first half does. “Vulnerable and neglected” gives one word about the woman's condition (vulnerable) and one about how others treat her (neglected). So the boy's pair should also give a quality and an action — he is compassionate (he feels for her) and thoughtful (he stops to think of his own mother, and asks before taking her arm).

Why not simply “strong and young”: so are the other boys in the troop, and they walk past. The words you choose must separate this boy from them.

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