In The Portrait of a Lady’ Khushwant Singh draws a pen-picture of his grandmother. He describes how he spent his childhood with her in the village. He also describes the changes that came in their relationship in the city. Ultimately, he describes the moving scene of her death.

The poem, The Photograph is about transience of human life, death, and mysteries surroundings them. The poet is looking at the photograph of her mother and missing her. The photograph depicts the scene of her mother’s childhood when she along with her cousins, Betty,  Dolly, and uncle had gone to the beach. The uncle had clicked this photograph.

Many years later after the poet was born and grown up into a young lady, her mother and  she would look at the photograph; the mother used to laugh at her childhood photograph.

After a few more years, the poet’s mother died. The poet still preserved that photograph. Now she would look at the photograph and miss her mother’s laughter at her own photograph. The poet felt the sea-holiday was her mother’s past; and her mother’s laughter had become her past now.

She also makes mention of man’s transience on the sands of life. When she thinks about all this she becomes miserably quiet with the sadness of separation from her mother.

Answer: D O M E

EXPLANATION:

The poem is vastly different in style from other poems written by Coleridge. The first stanza of the poem describes Khan's pleasure dome built alongside a sacred river fed by a powerful fountain. 

It means that a smile was painted on the hair of the photographed girls. 

The phrase smiling through their hair refers to the fact that these women had long hair half covering their faces and their smiles were so bright that it seemed like sunshine penetrating through that cover.

In other words, The breeze had swept the hair of the three girls at the beach onto their faces. They smiled at the camera through these wisps of hair.

A. The poet creates the imagery of a machine starting up when the goldfinch arrives in the tree. The sudden noise and movements produced by the young ones are like the starting of a machine. The stoking of the engine is actually the act of feeding the young ones and imparting energy and life into them.

B. After reaching the end of the branch, the bird makes a sweet chirping sound just like whispering and flies away towards the infinite sky. It again makes the Laburnum tree silent and death-like.

C.  Metaphor – an indirect comparison between two things. Generally, a quality is compared.

“It is the engine of her family.” : The goldfinch bird compared with the the engine

The story revolves around our protagonist Shyama and his young neighbour Ranga, who returned from Bangalore to Hoshialli, Mysore after finishing studies.

Shyama tries to arrange marriage between Ranga and Ratna, daughter of Rama Rao.

He tries a few tricks to organise a surprise meeting in which Ranga falls in love with Ratna.

He fools Ranga by telling him that Ratna is a married woman. Ranga feels sad at this knowledge.

Later he comes to know that Ratna is unmarried and asks her for marriage.

In the end, both of them get married and name their child Shyama, which was also the name of our main protagonist.

The poet's mother would laugh in remembrance of the times that she had had as a young girl with her cousins. She would point at the picture to show how funnily she was dressed for beach but that laughter as the poet has remarked was wry. This was due to the fact that she was acutely aware of passing time and how the past becomes a country that beckons to them but one can never return to that place.

The word cardboard denotes and refers to the photograph pasted on a hard thick paper. This word has been used to refer to a practice in the past when photographs were pasted on cardboard and framed with glass front to preserve them.

On the first day of the New year, they really enjoyed their travel in the sea. The family celebrated the New Year on board the ship.  

Unfortunately, on January 2nd, at dawn the sea turned very unfriendly and there were great gigantic waves. Around 6 am, the sea turned very furious and a tremendous explosion threw the author form one wall to the other and the waves went very high tossing the ship very forcefully almost capsizing it. Somehow the author finally took to the wheels and fought against all oddities along with his family and the crewmen.  

They somehow managed to save water from entering the ship by using canvas to hide holes. The water pump stopped working that became a real nightmare.

Fortunately, Gordan found an electric pump and saved themselves with it. Finally, they reached Amsterdam where they were welcomed by the inhabitants of that place. Sue and Joe were injured but they said that 'they were not afraid to die if they could all be together.'

The poem The Voice of the Rain is written in blank verse. It does not have any rhyme scheme.