NCERT Textbook: Animals - Class 10 PDF Download

 Page 1


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The poet tells us that he feels more at home with animals than
humans, whom he finds complicated and false.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
               so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with
            the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that
       lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince
        them plainly in their possession
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?
WALT WHITMAN
[From ‘Song of Myself ’ in Leaves of Grass]
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2022-23
Page 2


??????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ???????
The poet tells us that he feels more at home with animals than
humans, whom he finds complicated and false.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
               so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with
            the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that
       lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince
        them plainly in their possession
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?
WALT WHITMAN
[From ‘Song of Myself ’ in Leaves of Grass]
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1. Notice the use of the word ‘turn’ in the first line, “I think I could turn and live
with animals…”. What is the poet turning from?
2. Mention three things that humans do and animals don’t.
3. Do humans kneel to other humans who lived thousands of years ago? Discuss
this in groups.
4. What are the ‘tokens’ that the poet says he may have dropped long ago, and
which the animals have kept for him? Discuss this in class. (Hint: Whitman
belongs to the Romantic tradition that includes Rousseau and Wordsworth,
which holds that civilisation has made humans false to their own true nature.
What could be the basic aspects of our nature as living beings that humans
choose to ignore or deny?)
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