Complete solutions to the “Before you read” question, every “Think it out” question and the “Notice” activity in NCERT Class 12 English, Flamingo,
Poetry Chapter 3, A Thing of Beauty by John Keats. The questions are reproduced in the book’s
own wording (where a question quotes the poem differently from the poem itself, the poem’s own lines are given below it), and each answer is written in full sentences, using the poem’s own wording wherever the book supplies it.
1Before You Read
The book opens the poem with two questions to think about before reading.
Q. What pleasure does a beautiful thing give us? Are beautiful things worth treasuring?
Answer:
A beautiful thing, whether a flower, a sunrise, a stream, a piece of music or a lovely story,
fills us with joy, calms the mind and lifts our spirits when we are sad or tired. The pleasure does
not end when the moment passes: the memory of it stays with us and keeps comforting us later.
Yes, beautiful things are worth treasuring, because the joy they give lasts. This is exactly what
Keats argues in the poem: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” its loveliness “increases,” and it
“will never / Pass into nothingness.”
2Think it out
Q. List the things of beauty mentioned in the poem.
Answer:
In nature: the sun, the moon; trees, both old and young, giving shady shelter to simple sheep;
daffodils with the green world they live in; clear rills making their own cooling covert against the
hot season; and the mid forest brake, rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms.
In human imagination and memory: the grandeur we imagine for the fates (“dooms”) of the mighty
dead, and all the lovely tales that we have heard or read.
Q. List the things that cause suffering and pain.
Answer:
The poem names despondence (deep discouragement), “the inhuman dearth of noble natures” (the
cruel lack of good, noble people), “the gloomy days,” and “all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
made for our searching” (the unhealthy, dark paths life forces us to search through).
Q. What does the line, “Therefore are we wreathing a flowery band to bind us to earth”
suggest to you?
(The poem’s actual lines read: “Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing / A flowery band to bind us to the earth.”)
Answer:
It suggests that the constant joy beauty gives us is exactly what keeps us attached to life on
earth. Because beautiful things keep giving us fresh happiness, we go on, day after day (“every
morrow”), finding new reasons to love and stay bound to the world, almost as if we were weaving an
actual garland of flowers that ties us here.
Q. What makes human beings love life in spite of troubles and sufferings?
Answer:
The presence of beauty. However difficult life becomes, full of despondence, a lack of noble
people, gloomy days and dark, unhealthy paths, “some shape of beauty” appears and “moves away
the pall from our dark spirits,” lifting the gloom and renewing our attachment to life.
Q. Why is ‘grandeur’ associated with the ‘mighty dead’?
Answer:
Because we tend to imagine the fates (“dooms”) of great people who have died as larger, nobler
and more glorious than they may really have been; this imagined greatness, whether or not it was really so
grand in life, is itself a source of beauty for those who remember and imagine it.
Q. Do we experience things of beauty only for short moments or do they make a lasting
impression on us?
Answer:
The poem says beauty makes a lasting impression, not a brief one. Its opening claim is that “a
thing of beauty is a joy forever,” whose loveliness “increases” over time and “will never pass into
nothingness.” So according to the poem, the joy beauty gives is permanent, not momentary.
Q. What image does the poet use to describe the beautiful bounty of the earth?
Answer:
Keats compares it to “an endless fountain of immortal drink, / Pouring unto us from the heaven’s
brink”: an image of a never-ending, divine spring that keeps pouring beauty down to us, suggesting
that its source can never run dry.
3Notice the Rhyme Scheme, Line Length and Balance
Q. Notice the consistency in rhyme scheme and line length. Also notice the balance in each
sentence of the poem, as in, “Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, / Of all the unhealthy and
o’er-darkened ways / Made for our searching: yes in spite of all,”
Answer:
Rhyme scheme: the 24 lines are written in rhyming couplets, so every two lines rhyme with
each other: aa, bb, cc and so on (forever/never, keep/sleep, breathing/wreathing, earth/dearth,
days/ways, all/pall, moon/boon, daffodils/rills, make/brake, blooms/dooms, dead/read, drink/brink).
The scheme stays the same from the first line to the last.
Line length: the lines are of nearly equal length, about ten syllables each, with a steady
rhythm. Because the length and rhythm stay the same, the poem flows smoothly when read aloud.
Balance: the sentences repeat the same grammatical pattern. In the lines quoted by the
book, three phrases beginning with “of” (“Of noble natures,” “of the gloomy days,” “Of all the
unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways”) each name a different hardship in the same shape, so the
sentence feels balanced. The list of beautiful things is built the same way: “Such the sun, the
moon, / Trees old, and young … and such are daffodils … And such too is the grandeur …”
- All 7 “Think it out” answers above use the poem’s own wording wherever the book itself supplies
it - Question 1 needs both branches: beauty in nature AND beauty in human imagination/memory
- Questions 3 and 5 both ask you to interpret a specific line or phrase, not just repeat it: say
what it means, not only what it says