Short & Long Questions: Not Marbles Nor the Gilded Monuments (Sonnet 55) | Short & Long Answer Questions for Class 10 PDF Download

Short Answer Type
Q1: How does time affect powerful rulers?
Ans: Powerful rulers get monuments and statues built in marble and gold to be remembered by posterity but Time destroys their efforts by annihilating their creations.

Q2: In what way is the poet stronger than powerful rulers?
Ans: The creations of powerful rulers like statues and monuments are destroyed by Time but the poet is more powerful than these rulers because Time cannot destroy his creation.

Q3: What is ‘the ending doom’ and ‘the judgement’?
Ans: In traditional religions, Doomsday or judgment day is the point at which all souls, even those that have been dead for a long time will ‘arise’ to be judged by God.

Q4: What is the theme of Shakespeare’s sonnet, Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments?
Ans: This sonnet is a poem about time and immortalisation. The speaker claims that his poem will immortalise the beloved. The young man will survive all of these things through the verses of the speaker.

Long Answer Type
Q5: Compare and contrast the ravages of Time as shown in Not Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments and Ozymandias.
Ans: In Not Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments, the powerful rulers get monuments and statues built but Time destroys them. Time is more powerful than these man-made creations. The poet paints a destructive image of time, but explores the immortality of the subjects of poetry through the power of verse. In Ozymandias, the main theme is the inevitable decline of all leaders and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time.

Q6: Comment on the immortality of poetry to withstand the forces of decay over time with reference to Not Marble, Nor Gilded Monuments.
Ans: Not Marble, Nor Gilded Monuments, one of Shakespeare’s most famous verses, asserts the immortality of the poet’s sonnets to withstand the forces of decay over time. While monuments that princes build will be destroyed and their creators forgotten, the poet’s friend will Continue to shine brightly through verse. The value that can be derived from this instance is that stone monuments may crumble to dust, blackened by time and devastating war, but neither the God of War nor his quick-burning fires shall destroy poetry.