How does the poet imagine her to be, after death? Does he think of her as a person living in a very happy state (a ‘heaven’)? Or does he see her now as a part of nature? In which lines of the poem do you find your answer?

Discuss these questions in class with your teacher and then write down your answers in two or three paragraphs each.

1. Kezia’s efforts to please her father resulted in displeasing him very much. How did this happen?

2. Kezia decides that there are “different kinds of fathers”. What kind of father was Mr. Macdonald, and how was he different from Kezia’s father?

3. How does Kezia begin to see her father as a human being who needs her sympathy?

Answer these questions.

(i) Why does the poet want to know where the teachers go at four o’clock?

(ii) What are the things normal people do that the poet talks about?

(iii) What does he imagine about

(a) where do teachers live?

(b) what they do at home?

(c) the people with whom they live?

(d) their activities when they were children in school?

(iv) Why does the poet wonder if teachers also do things that other people do?

(v) How does the poet plan to find out? What will he do once he finds out?

How does Frost present nature in this poem? The following questions may help you to think of an answer.

(i) What are the birds that are usually named in poems? Do you think a crow is often mentioned in poems? What images come to your mind when you think of a crow?

(ii) Again, what is “a hemlock tree”? Why doesn’t the poet write about a more ‘beautiful’ tree such as a maple, or an oak, or a pine?

(iii) What do the ‘crow’ and ‘hemlock’ represent − joy or sorrow? What does the dust of snow that the crow shakes off a hemlock tree stand for?