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NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 –179Harvest Hymn (Sarojini Naidu) — Let us think and reflect (Extracts)

Book page 178 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Extract 1 — (i) What does the act of bringing songs and garlands as tribute suggest about the people's relationship with the divine? A. They fear the gods and wish to calm them in any way possible. B. They have a deep sense of reverence and gratitude towards the divine. C. They are forced to perform rituals without understanding the divine. D. They depend on the gods for their daily needs and activities.
Answer

B. They have a deep sense of reverence and gratitude towards the divine.

Why: Look at what is offered. Songs and garlands cost nothing and buy nothing — they are not a payment or a bribe, they are a way of saying thank you. The words around them confirm it: 'We bring thee our thanks', 'we hail thee, / We praise thee'. The tone throughout is warm and celebratory, with cymbal and flute, not anxious.
Why the others fail: A requires fear, and there is none — nowhere does the poem ask the gods to spare or forgive. C requires unwilling ritual, but these people are singing and dancing. D is the most tempting, because farmers do depend on sun and rain — but dependence alone would explain a request, not a gift of songs and garlands after the harvest is already in.
Q2.
Extract 1 — (ii) Complete the following sentence suitably. 'The word gold in the phrases the gold of our fields and the gold of our fruit symbolises ________________.'
Answer

The word 'gold' symbolises the ripened harvest itself — its golden colour, and its value as the farmers' greatest wealth, given to them by the sun.

How the image does two things at once:
  • Colour — ripe wheat, standing paddy and ripe fruit all turn golden, and it is the sun that turns them so. Calling them gold is literally accurate.
  • Worth — gold is the standard measure of preciousness. By using it, the farmers say that a full field is treasure. They own no gold, and they need none.
And the choice of word is not accidental: the stanza is addressed to Surya, and the sun is itself golden. The gold in the fields is the sun's own light, returned as grain.
Tip: When a question asks what a word 'symbolises', give both halves — the plain thing it stands for, and the quality it borrows. Half an answer ('it means the crop') scores half the marks.
Q3.
Extract 1 — (iii) How does the description 'O giver of mellowing radiance' help us understand Surya's role in the harvest?
Answer

It tells us that the sun's role is not merely to shine but to ripen. Mellowing means making something soft, sweet and mature; radiance is the light he gives. Put together, they name exactly what the sun does between sowing and harvest — its steady warmth turns a hard green fruit into a soft sweet one, and green stalks into gold grain.

Why 'mellowing' and not 'burning' or 'blazing': The sun can destroy a crop as easily as ripen it. Sarojini Naidu picks the one adjective that keeps him gentle. It also fits the rest of the stanza: he is 'lord of the morn' — the early, kind sun, not the noon sun — and he is 'munificent', a generous giver rather than a power to be feared. Every word in the stanza is chosen to make Surya a benefactor.
Check it yourself: The English word 'mellow' is used of fruit, of wine, of light and of a person's temper — always meaning something that has grown softer and richer with time. Say 'a mellow evening' and you can hear it.
Q4.
Extract 1 — (iv) Fill in the blank by selecting the correct option from those given in the brackets. 'The use of cymbal and flute signifies ________________.' (joy and celebration/meditation and worship)
Answer

The use of cymbal and flute signifies joy and celebration.

Why: A cymbal is loud, bright and rhythmic — it is a festival instrument, meant to be heard across a field, not a quiet aid to meditation. The flute is the shepherd's and the village fair's instrument. Together they belong to a crowd out of doors. Read the stanza's other instruments in sequence and the pattern is unmistakable: cymbal and flute, cymbal and pipe, cymbal and drum — that is a procession, not a prayer hall.
Notice the fourth stanza, though: when All Voices join, the instrument becomes 'cymbal and prayer'. The music grows steadily quieter and more inward until the last offering is not an instrument at all. Worship is present in the poem — it simply is not what cymbal and flute stand for.
Q5.
Extract 2 — (i) In the phrase 'Lord of our being,' what does the word 'being' most likely refer to? A. Our physical body B. Our entire existence C. Our spiritual practices D. Our earthly possessions
Answer

B. Our entire existence.

Why: 'Being' as a noun means the whole fact of existing — everything a person is, body and mind and life together. The lines that follow prove that the poet means the whole and not a part: 'Thou art our Hands (body) and our Heart (feeling) and our Home (life, family, belonging).' Three different aspects of a life are named, so 'being' must cover all of them.
Why the others fail: A takes only the body, which the line itself separates out as 'Hands'. C narrows it to religious practice, which the poem never mentions. D is the furthest off — possessions are what the farmers are giving away in this poem, not what they are.
Q6.
Extract 2 — (ii) Identify whether the following statement is true or false. 'The imagery of the Seed and the Scythe symbolises the divine's role as both the beginning (creation) and the end (harvest) of the agricultural cycle.'
Answer

True.

Why: A seed is where a crop begins; a scythe is the curved blade that cuts it down at the end. By saying 'Thou art the Seed and the Scythe of our harvests', the poet makes God present at both ends of the cycle — the sowing and the reaping, the making and the ending. It is the same idea as calling God 'Father eternal' two lines earlier: a power that stands outside time and therefore contains the whole of it.
Notice the sound: Seed and Scythe both begin with /s/, so the two ends of the cycle are locked together by alliteration as well as by meaning. And you have met the scythe already in this unit — it is the tool the grass-cutting woman swings in The Cherry Tree, cutting the young tree in two.
Q7.
Extract 2 — (iii) Identify the phrases from the extract that mean the following: A. The divine as a timeless, everlasting presence B. Beyond human comprehension or description
Answer
MeaningPhrase from the extractExplanation
A. The divine as a timeless, everlasting presence'Father eternal'Eternal means without beginning or end — a presence that time does not touch.
B. Beyond human comprehension or description'ineffable Om'Ineffable means too great to be put into words. Note the paradox: Om is a sound, yet it is called unspeakable — the poet is saying that even the holiest syllable falls short of what it names.
Why the two sit side by side in one line: 'Father eternal, ineffable Om!' places the most intimate word for God ('Father') beside the most abstract ('Om'), and calls the first everlasting and the second indescribable. In half a line the poem moves from a family relationship to something no language can hold — which is exactly the leap the fourth stanza has to make when men's and women's voices join into all voices.
Q8.
Extract 2 — (iv) How do we know that these lines from the extract are spoken as a chorus?
Answer

We know it in three ways, and the poet gives us all three.

  • She labels it. The stanza is headed 'All Voices:' — set apart on its own line, just as 'Men's Voices:' and 'Women's Voices:' were earlier. The poem is laid out like a script.
  • The pronouns are plural. 'Lord of our being… our harvests… our Hands and our Heart and our Home… We bring thee our lives… Grant us.' There is no 'I' anywhere in the poem.
  • The form repeats. This stanza has the same shape and the same closing formula as the three before it — 'we hail thee, / We praise thee, O …, with cymbal and …' — so the whole gathering can come in on lines they have already sung three times.
Why the poem is arranged this way: The men praise the sun and the rain, the powers that come from the sky; the women praise the Earth, the mother; and only when both have sung do all the voices together address the Lord of the Universe. The structure enacts its own meaning — the village is separate in its work and united in its worship.
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