NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 7 Words (poem by Charles Swain) — Check Your Understanding

Book page 222–224 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. Fill in the blanks with one word from the poem. One example has been done for you. In this poem, the poet reflects that words fail to truly satisfy what the heart wants to convey. Words are compared to summer birds who 1. __________, leaving nothing behind. The heart, is equated to a 2. __________ who finds that words are as worthless as 3. __________ when needed. He feels that a few sincere words can bring more 4. __________ than many meaningless ones. He adds that a voice that brings happiness to a 5. __________ place does not say much, but the few words it does, are very precious. Moreover, if words could satisfy us, the 6. __________ would celebrate but words often fail to do that. The poem ends on the note that empty words may look impressive with lots of flowers, but they cannot produce anything valuable, like a 7. __________.

Answer

The completed summary (the example given in the book is satisfy):

Words are compared to summer birds who 1. depart, leaving nothing behind.
The heart is equated to a 2. pilgrim who finds that words are as worthless as 3. weeds when needed.
A few sincere words can bring more 4. joy than many meaningless ones.
A voice that brings happiness to a 5. lonely place does not say much, but the few words it does are very precious.
If words could satisfy us, the 6. world would celebrate.
Empty words cannot produce anything valuable, like a 7. fruit.

Each blank has one line of the poem behind it — track them stanza by stanza:

Blank	Word	Line in the poem	Stanza
1	depart	“But words, like summer birds, depart, / And leave but empty air.”	1
2	pilgrim	“The heart, a pilgrim upon earth,”	2
3	weeds	“That words are of as little worth / As just so many weeds.”	2
4	joy	“A little said, and truly said, / Can deeper joy impart”	3
5	lonely	“A lonely home to cheer,”	4
6	world	“The world might hold a feast;”	5
7	fruit	“But whose poor nature cannot grow, / One particle of fruit!”	6

Watch blank 5. The summary says “a lonely place”, but the poem says “a lonely home”. The blank asks for one word from the poem that fits the summary’s own sentence — and that word is lonely, the adjective, not home. Read the sentence you are completing, not only the line you are quoting from.

Q2.

II. Let us appreciate the poem. 1. Read the poem again. Find any four sets of rhyming words and also write the rhyme scheme of the poem.

Answer

Rhyme scheme: abab, repeated in every one of the six stanzas — so the poem as a whole is abab cdcd efef ghgh ijij klkl. The first and third lines rhyme with each other, and the second and fourth with each other.

Four sets of rhyming words (there are twelve to choose from):

Stanza	a-rhyme (lines 1 and 3)	b-rhyme (lines 2 and 4)
1	heart — depart	care — air
2	earth — worth	needs — weeds
3	said — head	impart — heart
4	way — say	cheer — dear
5	chest — test	feast — least
6	show — grow	root — fruit

What the rhyme scheme does — this is what ‘appreciate’ means. abab holds each stanza open until the fourth line, because the first line’s rhyme is not answered until line 3, and the second line’s not until line 4. So every stanza is a small suspense: a hope is raised, then closed off. Look at stanza 1 — heart… care… depart… air. The word heart is answered by depart, and the whole argument of the poem is in that one pairing. Stanza 5 does it again with chest / test and feast / least: the promise of a feast is rhymed with getting the least. Swain rhymes the hope with its own disappointment.

Two more things to notice. First, the stanza is in common metre — 8, 6, 8, 6 syllables — the metre of ballads and hymns, which is why the poem sounds like something to be said aloud or sung. Second, several rhymes are on heart or depart; the poem keeps returning to the same sound as well as the same idea.

Q3.

II. 2. Read the following phrases and sentences taken from the poem. Identify the poetic device in each of them and explain what the poet wants to communicate through their usage. (i) But words, like summer birds, depart…

Answer

Device: simile — words are compared to summer birds using the word like.

Paraphrase first: words fly away just as the migratory birds of summer fly away, and where they were there is now only empty air.

Why summer birds, and not just birds — this is where the comparison earns its place.

They come and go by season. Summer birds are visitors. They belong to the warm weather and leave when it ends. So do words spoken in a warm moment — the promise made in good times, the compliment paid at a party.
They are beautiful and weightless. Nobody dislikes summer birds; that is exactly the trouble. Pleasant words are pleasant, and just as impossible to keep.
They leave the place emptier than before. The next line finishes the picture — “And leave but empty air.” Air was there before the birds came too, but now it is empty, because you have learnt what it is like to have them in it.

The simile is doing something a plain statement could not: ‘words are temporary’ is a claim you can agree with and forget, but a sky with the birds gone out of it is an image you carry away.

Q4.

II. 2. (ii) heart, a pilgrim upon earth…

Answer

Device: metaphor — the heart is not said to be like a pilgrim; it is called one outright. (The line also uses apposition, setting the two nouns side by side with only a comma between them, so the identification is instant.)

Paraphrase: the human heart is a traveller on a long, hard journey through this world, always making for something it has not yet reached.

Everything the word pilgrim brings with it:

A pilgrim is on a journey, not at home. The heart is restless by nature; it is passing through, and “upon earth” makes the whole world only the road.
A pilgrim is in need. He carries little and depends on what the road gives him — food, water, shelter. That is precisely the situation of the next line: the heart “Finds often, when it needs” — and finds words worthless. A pilgrim asking for water is handed a fistful of weeds.
A pilgrim is looking for something sacred. This raises what the heart wants above ordinary comfort: it wants truth, love, meaning — things words are supposed to supply.

Put the metaphor next to the simile in (i) and the poem’s structure appears: words are birds that fly off; the heart is a pilgrim left standing on the road.

Q5.

II. 2. (iii) words are of as little worth / As just so many weeds

Answer

Device: simile — the comparison is made with as … as (“of as little worth as … weeds”).

Paraphrase: words are worth no more than a patch of weeds.

Why weeds is the exact right choice, and not, say, dust or stones:

Nobody plants a weed. It arrives on its own, unasked — like the words that pour out of people who feel they must say something.
Weeds are plentiful. “Just so many” insists on the quantity. The problem with words is never scarcity.
They look like the real thing. A weed is green and growing; from a distance the bed looks planted. Empty words look like sympathy.
They crowd out what was sown. This is the sharpest point. Weeds do not merely fail to help — they take the water and light meant for the flowers. Too much talk drives out the little that was worth saying.

Notice also the dismissive rhythm of “just so many” — three flat monosyllables that treat words as something to be counted and swept up. And the simile chimes with the poem’s other plant image in stanza 6: weeds at the beginning, flowers without fruit at the end. The poem is quietly a gardener’s argument.

Q6.

II. 2. (iv) If words could satisfy the chest … Oft satisfy the least!

Answer

Device: paradox, built on the repetition of one word. The same verb, satisfy, is used twice within four lines and reverses its meaning: what is imagined as satisfying everything ends up satisfying least of all. (You may also name the repetition antithesis — two opposed ideas balanced against each other — and there is irony in the outcome, since the result defeats the expectation.)

Paraphrase: if only words could fill the human breast, the whole world could sit down to a banquet — but when words are actually put to the test, they turn out to give the least satisfaction of anything.

How the contradiction is engineered:

If words could satisfy … → a condition, not a fact
the world might hold a feast → a possibility, not a promise
But words, when summoned to the test → the turn
Oft satisfy the least! → the verdict

Everything before the But is in the conditional — if, could, might. Swain never claims the feast is happening; he only lets us imagine it for two lines before shutting it down. And the shutting down uses the same verb as the opening up, so the disappointment is measured in the exact terms of the hope. ‘Chest’ rather than ‘heart’ makes it physical — a hollow that food would fill, which is why the feast image follows so naturally.

Also worth naming: chest for the seat of feeling is metonymy — a part of the body standing for the emotions housed there, exactly as heart does in stanza 1. Swain switches from heart to chest so that the fifth stanza can repeat the first without simply repeating it.

Q7.

II. 2. (v) The world might hold a feast…

Answer

Device: hyperbole — a deliberate exaggeration, not meant to be believed. (The book itself names these lines as its example of hyperbole in exercise III.) A metaphor sits inside it too: contentment is pictured as a feast.

Paraphrase: if words really could fill the human heart, then everybody everywhere would have cause to celebrate.

Why exaggerate here of all places? Because the poem needs the disappointment of the next two lines to be as large as possible. Swain does not say ‘people would be a little happier’; he throws the whole world into a feast — the biggest picture of shared, bodily satisfaction there is. Then: “Oft satisfy the least!” The drop from the world to the least, and from a feast to nothing, is the whole effect. Hyperbole is used to build the height from which the idea is dropped.

Notice the word hold. One does not merely have a feast, one holds one — the word implies hosts, guests and an occasion. So the image is not just eating; it is everybody invited, together. That is what the poet says words can never manage: they cannot gather people, only reach them.

Q8.

II. 2. (vi) Like plants that make a gaudy show / All blossom to the root

Answer

Device: simile (“Like plants…”), extended over the whole final stanza, with personification pressing on it — the plants ‘make a show’, as an actor or a boaster does.

Paraphrase: empty words are like plants that put on a flashy display, flowering all the way down to the root.

Unpack “All blossom to the root”, the strangest phrase in the poem. A healthy plant is flower on top and root below — the flower is the display, the root is what feeds it and holds it in the ground. To be “all blossom to the root” is to be flower the whole way down: show where the substance should be. There is nothing underneath doing the work. That is why the next two lines can say the plant “cannot grow / One particle of fruit”: a plant with no root cannot feed anything, so nothing can ripen.

And gaudy is chosen with care. Gaudy does not mean beautiful — it means showy in a cheap way, bright beyond good taste. The word passes judgement before the argument is even made. Compare “hosts of words, which reach the head” in stanza 3: hosts and gaudy are both words about excess, and in this poem excess is always the enemy of truth.

Q9.

II. 2. (vii) But whose poor nature cannot grow / One particle of fruit!

Answer

Device: metaphor, completing the plant comparison begun in (vi), with personification in “poor nature” (the plant is given a character, and pitied for it) and hyperbole in the negative — “not one particle”, the smallest imaginable amount, and even that is beyond it.

Paraphrase: such a plant, by its very nature, cannot produce even the tiniest scrap of fruit — and neither can empty talk produce anything of use.

Three things this ending does:

It moves the blame from the speaker to the words. “Whose poor nature” says the failure is built in. The plant is not lazy; it is made this way. So too with words — Swain’s complaint is not that people lie, but that words by nature reach “the head” and not “the heart”.
It insists on results. Flowers are for looking at; fruit is what you can eat and what carries the seed. The whole poem has been asking one question — what does talk actually produce? — and the answer is given in its last word.
It ends on an exclamation. After five stanzas of steady argument, the poem stops on a note of exasperation. See Check Your Understanding II.4: stanza 6’s exclamation mark is the sound of disillusionment.

Finally, notice the poem’s own shape: it begins with summer birds that fly off leaving empty air, and ends with a flowering plant that leaves no fruit. Both images say the same thing — plenty of display, nothing left behind — but the second is worse, because a plant cannot even fly away; it stands there, blossoming pointlessly.

Q10.

II. 3. Which words are repeated in the poem? Why does the poet use repetition?

Answer

The repeated words are words, heart, satisfy, said, few / fewest and the connective But.

Repeated	Where	What the repetition does
words (seven times)	“If words could satisfy…”, “But words, like summer birds…”, “That words are of as little worth…”, “hosts of words…”, “the fewest words…”, “If words could satisfy the chest…”, “But words, when summoned…”	Keeps the subject in front of us in every stanza — and, more cleverly, enacts the fault it is describing. The poem is crowded with the word ‘words’, just as empty talk is crowded with words.
heart (five times)	“satisfy the heart”, “The heart might find less care”, “The heart, a pilgrim”, “never touch the heart”, and by substitution “satisfy the chest”	Names the thing words keep failing to reach. Every stanza sets words against heart, so the two nouns become the poem’s two sides.
satisfy (three times)	“If words could satisfy the heart” (1), “If words could satisfy the chest” (5), “Oft satisfy the least!” (5)	Frames the poem: stanza 5 repeats stanza 1’s opening line almost exactly, with chest for heart — and then breaks the promise with the same verb.
said / say	“A little said, and truly said”, “Hath oft the fewest words to say”	“A little said, and truly said” puts the two conditions of good speech into one line by repeating the verb — it must be little, and it must be true.
But (four times, always at the turn)	“But words, like summer birds…”, “But never touch the heart”, “But, oh! those few…”, “But words, when summoned…”, “But whose poor nature…”	Marks the reversal in stanza after stanza. Each stanza raises a hope and then a But takes it away, so the poem develops a rhythm of expectation and let-down.

So why repetition, in one sentence? Because Swain is arguing that quantity is worthless and only sincerity counts — and repetition lets him make that argument twice over: once by saying it, and once by letting the reader feel the tedium of a poem in which the same few words keep coming round. The most beautiful line in the piece is the one that finally stops repeating and says almost nothing: “But, oh! those few, how dear!”

Q11.

II. 4. The stanzas 4, 5, and 6 end with exclamation marks. Choose the option that displays the emotions being expressed through them. (i) 4. disillusionment 5. admiration and 6. frustration (ii) 4. frustration 5. admiration and 6. disillusionment (iii) 4. admiration 5. frustration and 6. disillusionment (iv) 4. frustration 5. disillusionment and 6. admiration

Answer

Answer: (iii) — stanza 4 admiration, stanza 5 frustration, stanza 6 disillusionment.

Stanza	The line that ends in ‘!’	Emotion	How you can tell
4	“But, oh! those few, how dear!”	Admiration	The whole stanza praises the voice that “wins its sunny way, / A lonely home to cheer”. “How dear!” is warm — the only affectionate exclamation in the poem, and it comes with an “oh!” of pleasure.
5	“Oft satisfy the least!”	Frustration	Hope is raised (a world holding a feast) and then defeated. The exclamation lands on least — annoyance at something that keeps failing when it is needed.
6	“One particle of fruit!”	Disillusionment	The last stanza gives up on words altogether: they are a showy plant that by nature can produce nothing. This is not irritation but the loss of an illusion — the settled conclusion the poem has been moving towards.

Frustration or disillusionment — how do you tell them apart? Frustration is anger at being blocked; you still expect the thing to work. Disillusionment is quieter and more final: you no longer expect it at all. Stanza 5 still says “if words could satisfy” — the hope is alive enough to be disappointed. Stanza 6 has stopped hoping: “whose poor nature cannot grow” — it is in the plant’s nature, so nothing will change. The three exclamation marks track the poem’s emotional descent: praise, then annoyance, then the end of expectation. That order is exactly what option (iii) states.

Q12.

III. Identify examples of hyperbole from the given lines. If words could satisfy the chest, The world might hold a feast.

Answer

Both lines together form the hyperbole, and there are two exaggerations inside it:

“The world might hold a feast” — the whole world, all of it, sitting down to one celebration. No feast has ever included everybody, and the poet does not expect us to imagine that it could.
“words could satisfy the chest” — words are not food; the idea that they might fill a person the way a meal does is an exaggeration in itself, and it is what makes the feast image possible in the next line.

What hyperbole is: deliberate exaggeration used for effect, which neither speaker nor listener takes literally. It is not a lie, because nobody is deceived.

Why the poet exaggerates here. He is about to say that words satisfy least. To make that fall feel steep, he first builds the highest possible platform — not ‘people would be happier’ but the world, not ‘we would be content’ but a feast. Then the very next line drops us: “But words, when summoned to the test, / Oft satisfy the least!” The bigger the exaggeration, the harder the correction lands. Hyperbole in this poem is a measuring device, not a decoration.

Q13.

III. Work in pairs. Complete the sentences given below with hyperboles. Use the hints given in the brackets. 1. I have ______________ things to do on this weekend. (lots of/tonnes of)

Answer

Answer: tonnes of. — “I have tonnes of things to do on this weekend.”

Why tonnes of and not lots of: the exercise asks for a hyperbole, so the answer must be the option that exaggerates. “Lots of” is simply a quantity — it could be literally true, and nobody would blink. “Tonnes of” weighs your homework in thousands of kilograms, which is plainly impossible and therefore comic. That impossibility is what makes it hyperbole.

The test to apply to all four items: ask “could this be literally true?” If yes, it is not a hyperbole. If it is absurd on its face — and everybody understands it anyway — you have found the right option.

Q14.

III. 2. The player missed the basket by ______________. (a mile/ an inch)

Answer

Answer: a mile. — “The player missed the basket by a mile.”

Apply the test. On a basketball court, missing by an inch is not only possible, it is common — that is a literal measurement of a near miss. Missing by a mile is impossible on any court in the world, and that is exactly why it works: the exaggeration tells you the shot was nowhere near, and it does so more vividly than ‘by a long way’.

Notice the risk in this idiom. Missed by a mile and missed by an inch mean opposite things — one is hopeless, the other is agonisingly close. A hyperbole is not just a stronger version of the literal phrase; here it reverses the meaning. Read the sentence you are completing before you choose.

Q15.

III. 3. My mother is so tired that she can sleep for a ______________. (night/decade)

Answer

Answer: a decade. — “My mother is so tired that she can sleep for a decade.”

Why: sleeping for a night is what everybody does every day — no exaggeration, and no information either. Sleeping for ten years is impossible, and that impossibility is the measure of how tired she is. The structure “so tired that…” is itself built for hyperbole: it invites a consequence large enough to prove the claim.

Try this: make three more with the same frame — so hungry that I could eat a horse, so heavy that it weighs a tonne, so cold that my fingers dropped off. Then look back at Swain: so unsatisfying that, if words could satisfy, the world might hold a feast. The same machinery, used seriously.

Q16.

III. 4. I will be back in ______________. (five minutes/two seconds)

Answer

Answer: two seconds. — “I will be back in two seconds.”

Why: nobody can go anywhere and return in two seconds. Five minutes is a real, checkable promise; two seconds is a figure of speech meaning ‘almost at once’, and everyone hears it that way. The exaggeration here is a shrinking one — hyperbole works by making things impossibly small just as often as impossibly large.

Everyday hyperboles of the shrinking kind: in a second, in a flash, in the blink of an eye, in no time at all. Compare their opposite numbers — I have told you a thousand times, I waited for ages, a mountain of homework. Both directions are the same device.

Q17.

IV. Rhythm gives a lyrical quality to a poem. The rhythm (pattern of beats) in a line of poetry is described by a metrical form. A metre is formed by a stressed and an unstressed syllable. Syllable is the name given to a single unit of speech/beats of spoken language. The metrical form in the first four lines is given below. The stressed syllables have been underlined. If words could sa tis fy the heart, The heart might find less care; But words, like sum mer birds, de part, And leave but emp ty air. Now, listen to the teacher read the poem. As you listen, underline the syllables that are stressed in all the lines of the poem. Share your answers with the teacher.

Answer

Do the counting first — the shape of the stanza is what makes the stresses predictable.

Syllable count, every stanza: line 1 = 8, line 2 = 6, line 3 = 8, line 4 = 6.
With the rhyme scheme abab, that 8-6-8-6 pattern is called common metre — the metre of ballads and hymns.

The beat you hear when the poem is read aloud is iambic — an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, te-TUM, four times in the long lines and three times in the short ones. Marked with bold for the stresses:

If WORDS could SAt-is-FY the HEART,
The HEART might FIND less CARE;
But WORDS, like SUM-mer BIRDS, de-PART,
And LEAVE but EMP-ty AIR.

The HEART, a PIL-grim UP-on EARTH,
Finds OFT-en, WHEN it NEEDS,
That WORDS are OF as LIT-tle WORTH
As JUST so MAN-y WEEDS.

A LIT-tle SAID, and TRU-ly SAID,
Can DEEP-er JOY im-PART
Than HOSTS of WORDS, which REACH the HEAD,
But NEV-er TOUCH the HEART.

The VOICE that WINS its SUN-ny WAY,
A LONE-ly HOME to CHEER,
Hath OFT the FEW-est WORDS to SAY;
But, OH! those FEW, how DEAR!

If WORDS could SAt-is-FY the CHEST,
The WORLD might HOLD a FEAST;
But WORDS, when SUM-moned TO the TEST,
Oft SAT-is-FY the LEAST!

Like PLANTS that MAKE a GAUD-y SHOW,
All BLOS-som TO the ROOT;
But WHOSE poor NA-ture CAN-not GROW,
One PAR-ti-cle of FRUIT!

A note on the example printed in your book. On page 224 the underlines fall on If, could, tis / The, might, less / But, like, mer, de / And, but, ty — that is, on the odd-numbered syllables (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th). Read the lines aloud and you will find the beat falls the other way, on the even-numbered syllables, giving the te-TUM of common metre. Follow your teacher’s reading, since that is what the exercise asks you to do; but if your marking comes out as above, you are hearing the poem correctly.

What the metre is doing for the poem. Common metre is the beat of hymns and ballads — plain, public, easy to remember, the rhythm of something meant to be spoken to other people rather than admired on a page. That is a pointed choice for a poem which argues that the best speech is short, plain and true. Notice too where Swain breaks the beat: “But, oh! those few, how dear!” has an extra pause after ‘oh’, and the line stumbles for a moment — exactly at the point where the poem stops arguing and simply feels something.

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