NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 6 A Friend Found in Music (poem by Bryanna T. Perkins) — Check Your Understanding

Book page 195 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. Read the poem again to complete the poet’s diary about her feelings on music. Fill in the blanks with words from the poem. Today, I’ve been thinking about how essential music is to me. It is like an ocean that calls me to its 1. ____. Music is the 2. _____ that harmonises with my 3. _____, moving me in ways I can’t explain. When I feel sad or upset about things, music is the 4. _____ that eases the ache. It is amazing how music has the power to lift my 5. ____, and give me strength to pull through difficult times. I know that it is the effect of music whenever I feel 6. ____. Music is the much 7. _______, dependable friend when there is no one to 8. ______. Thank you, my dear music, for being my all-time comfort.

Answer

Every blank is filled with a word taken straight from the poem:

1. shore 2. rhythm 3. core 4. therapy
5. spirits 6. cheerful 7. needed 8. care

Blank	Answer	The line it comes from
1. calls me to its ___	shore	“Music is the ocean / That pulls me to the shore.”
2. Music is the ___	rhythm	“Music is the rhythm”
3. harmonises with my ___	core	“That moves me to the core.”
4. music is the ___ that eases the ache	therapy	“Music is the therapy / I need when I feel blue.”
5. power to lift my ___	spirits	“Music lifts my spirits”
6. whenever I feel ___	cheerful	“The times when I’m most cheerful, / It’s clear, music was there.”
7. the much ___, dependable friend	needed	“Music is the needed friend”
8. when there is no one to ___	care	“When no one seems to care.”

How the diary differs from the poem, and why that helps you: the diary is a paraphrase — it says the same things in ordinary prose. So each blank can be found by matching an idea, not a word. ‘Eases the ache’ is the diary’s way of saying what a therapy does; ‘calls me’ is its way of saying pulls. Read the whole sentence, decide what the poem said in that place, and only then look for the exact word.

Tip: the instruction says fill in the blanks with words from the poem. Write shore, not ‘beach’; spirits, not ‘mood’. Even a perfect synonym loses the mark.

Q2.

II. Let us appreciate the poem. 1. The phrase ‘moves me’ in the line ‘That moves me to the core,’ is an example of _____________.

Answer

A metaphor — a figurative use of the verb move. (Some teachers will describe it as ‘figurative or metaphorical language’; both mean the same thing here.)

Why the phrase is figurative: move in its literal sense means to shift something from one place to another. Music cannot push the poet anywhere. What she means is the second, transferred sense of the word — to stir strong feeling. The book itself makes the point in Vocabulary in Context: “‘Move’ also has different meanings. For example, to change position, to make progress, to take action, cause strong feelings.” The poem uses the physical verb and asks us to feel the emotional meaning through it.

And what ‘to the core’ adds: the core is the innermost part of a thing — an apple’s core, the earth’s core. Saying music reaches her core turns the feeling into a place, and claims the feeling goes to the deepest part of her. It is a deliberate exaggeration (hyperbole) laid on top of the metaphor, and the two together are what make a short, plain line carry so much weight.

Notice the pairing. The line before it says “Music is the rhythm”. A rhythm literally makes bodies move — feet tap, heads nod. So the poet takes a verb that would be literally true of rhythm and turns it inward: not my feet, but my core. That is the whole art of the couplet.

Q3.

II. 2. The poet uses metaphors for music. List these metaphors and rewrite them as similes. For example, Music is as ___________ as __________.

Answer

A metaphor says one thing is another; a simile says it is like another, using as or like. So the rewriting is mechanical — but the interesting part is what each comparison claims.

Metaphor in the poem	As a simile (‘as … as’)	As a simile (‘like’)	What the comparison claims
“Music is the ocean / That pulls me to the shore.”	Music is as vast and irresistible as an ocean.	Music is like an ocean that pulls me to the shore.	It is huge, and it draws her without her choosing — the pull of a tide.
“Music is the rhythm / That moves me to the core.”	Music is as stirring as a rhythm that reaches my core.	Music is like a rhythm that moves me to the core.	It works on her bodily and inwardly at once, the way a beat does.
“Music is the therapy / I need when I feel blue.”	Music is as healing as therapy.	Music is like the therapy I need when I feel blue.	It is treatment, not entertainment — something she needs.
“Music is the needed friend / When no one seems to care.”	Music is as dependable as a friend.	Music is like a friend I need when no one seems to care.	It is loyal company — the last comparison, and the title of the poem.

What is lost when you turn them into similes: this is the real lesson of the exercise. “Music is like an ocean” keeps a small distance — the poet stands outside the comparison and points at it. “Music is the ocean” closes that distance completely: for the length of the line, music and ocean are the same thing. That is why the metaphor is stronger, and why the poet uses is four times and like never. Notice also the definite article: not ‘an ocean’ but “the ocean”, not ‘a friend’ but “the needed friend” — as though there were only one, and music were it.

A fifth image worth listing: “Music lifts my spirits” is not built on is, so it is not one of the four ‘Music is…’ metaphors — but it is figurative in the same way as ‘moves me’, giving music a physical action it cannot literally perform.

Q4.

II. 3. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? What impact does it have?

Answer

The rhyme scheme is abcb in each of the three stanzas — only the second and fourth lines rhyme, while the first and third are left unrhymed.

Stanza	Line endings	Scheme
1	ocean / shore / rhythm / core	a b c b
2	therapy / blue / spirits / through	a b c b
3	cheerful / there / friend / care	a b c b

The impact — four things it does:

It makes the poem sound like a song. abcb over four short lines is the shape of a ballad stanza and of most nursery rhymes and hymns — the most singable pattern in English. For a poem about music, the form is doing the same work as the subject.
It seals each idea. The rhyme always lands on the word that completes the thought — shore, core, through, care. Each stanza therefore snaps shut, and the reader feels an idea has been finished before the next begins.
It keeps the voice natural. Because lines 1 and 3 are free, the poem never has to twist its grammar to reach a rhyme. That is why it reads like someone talking — which suits a poem written as a personal confession.
It gives a steady pulse without monotony. A rhyme every fourth line is a beat you can wait for. Rhyming every line (aabb) would have made a light jingle out of lines about sadness and recovery.

Look at the last rhyme in particular. The final pair is there / care, closing on “When no one seems to care.” The poem’s most lonely word is the one the whole rhyme scheme has been walking towards — and because the pattern has taught us to expect a rhyme there, the word arrives with extra weight. Rhyme is not decoration here; it is timing.

Q5.

II. 4. What is the poet’s purpose in using the word ‘music’ repetitively?

Answer

The word music opens five of the twelve lines — “Music is the ocean… Music is the rhythm… Music is the therapy… Music lifts my spirits… Music is the needed friend.” The repetition of a word at the start of successive lines has a name: anaphora. The poet uses it for four reasons.

To build a definition by accumulation. No single line can say what music is, so each repetition adds one more role — ocean, rhythm, therapy, friend. The poem is a list that behaves like an argument: by the fifth ‘Music is…’, the claim has been proved by weight rather than by explanation.
To imitate music itself. A repeated phrase at fixed intervals is a refrain, and a refrain is a musical device. The poem keeps returning to its first word the way a song returns to its opening line. Form and subject are the same thing here.
To make music the doer. Notice the grammar: music is the subject of almost every sentence, and the poet is the object — music pulls me, moves me, lifts my spirits. She never says ‘I listen’. The repetition therefore quietly argues that music is the active force and the poet the one acted upon — which is exactly how a person feels when music arrives at the right moment.
To sound like a mind circling one thought. The diary the book asks you to complete in question I is the clue: this is someone alone, thinking about the same thing over and over. Repetition is what that sounds like.

Try this: read the poem aloud replacing the repeated word with pronouns — “Music is the ocean… It is the rhythm… It is the therapy.” The sense survives, the insistence does not. That missing insistence is the poet’s purpose.

Q6.

II. 5. What is the message the poet wishes to convey through the poem?

Answer

The message is that music is not entertainment but companionship — a source of comfort, healing and strength that is available exactly when human company is not.

The poem builds to it in a deliberate order. It begins with music as something vast and pleasurable — “Music is the ocean / That pulls me to the shore” — moves to music as something that reaches her deeply, “moves me to the core”, then to music as medicine, “the therapy / I need when I feel blue”, and finally to music as a person: “Music is the needed friend / When no one seems to care.” Each step makes the claim more personal and more necessary; by the end it is not a pleasure but a relationship.

The two lines that carry the message most exactly:

“To make sure I pull through.” — Pull through means to survive something very difficult. Music is credited not with cheering her up but with getting her through.
“When no one seems to care.” — the poem’s last line, and its loneliest. It defines the friendship by the moment it is needed: not when things are good, but when nobody else is there.

And she is careful not to make music only a cure for sadness. “The times when I’m most cheerful, / It’s clear, music was there” puts music into her happiness too. The full message is that music is present at both ends of her emotional life — which is what makes it a friend rather than a remedy.

Q7.

II. 6. Identify the mood of the poem from the options given below. (i) nostalgic (ii) thoughtful (iii) amused (iv) playful

Answer

(ii) thoughtful.

The poem is a quiet self-examination. The speaker is not telling a story or entertaining anyone; she is working out, image by image, what music has done for her — ocean, rhythm, therapy, friend. The book itself calls the exercise “the poet’s diary about her feelings on music”, and a diary is written in exactly this mood: alone, unhurried, taking stock.

Option	Why it does not fit
(i) nostalgic	Nostalgia is longing for a past that is gone. The poem is in the present tense throughout — pulls, moves, need, lifts — and nothing in it is lost or remembered with regret.
(iii) amused	There is no joke, no irony and nothing to smile at. The poem’s emotional low point — “when I feel blue”, “when no one seems to care” — is treated seriously.
(iv) playful	Playfulness shows in wordplay, surprise and a light touch. This poem repeats one solemn sentence pattern (‘Music is the…’) and uses the plainest possible vocabulary. It is simple, but it is not light.

How to identify a mood in any poem — three quick tests: look at the tense (past-heavy poems tend to nostalgia), at the vocabulary (therapy, blue, pull through, care are all serious words), and at the pace set by the punctuation. Here every stanza is one or two calm sentences with no exclamations at all — the pace of someone thinking, not of someone excited.

Q8.

II. 7. Give evidence from the poem to support that the speaker is the poet herself.

Answer

Four kinds of evidence, taken together, make it clear that the ‘I’ of the poem is Bryanna T. Perkins speaking in her own voice and not through an invented character.

The poem is entirely in the first person, with no other person in it. “pulls me… moves me… I need when I feel blue… lifts my spirits… I pull through… I’m most cheerful.” There is no ‘he’, no ‘she’, no name, no situation — nothing that would mark the speaker off as someone else.
There is no dramatic frame. A poem with an invented speaker normally supplies a setting, an age, a job, a listener or quotation marks that separate the voice from the poet. This poem supplies none of them, so the plainest reading is the direct one.
The confessions are private and unflattering. Admitting “I feel blue” and that sometimes “no one seems to care” is the kind of thing a poet says about herself; a created character would usually be given a story to explain such feelings.
The title points at the poet’s own experience. “A Friend Found in Music” describes a discovery someone has made — and the poem is the account of making it.

One more piece of evidence from the book itself: the exercise just above this one asks you to complete “the poet’s diary about her feelings on music”, and the poem is signed by Bryanna T. Perkins. The book is reading the ‘I’ as the poet, and the feminine pronoun in its own instruction confirms it.

A caution worth carrying to Class 10: in poetry the speaker and the poet are not automatically the same person — the voice in a poem is called the persona, and a poet may write as a soldier, a child or a tree. You are being asked here to show why, in this particular poem, there is no gap between the two. The answer is that the poem gives you no reason to open one.

Was this helpful? Report an error