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ICSE Class 10 English The Heart of the Tree summary and Important Questions The Poet… Henry Cuyler Bunner was born on August 3, 1855 in New York and was educated in New York City. After working for some time as a clerk in an importing house, he turned to Journalism. In 1877, he became an assistant editor of the comic Weekly Puck, and soon assumed it’s editorship.
At that time Puck was struggling for his survival but Bunner’s perseverance and literary skills developed it into a powerful and social media.
Although Bunner started his career as a prose writer, but basically, he was a poet. His verse shows a mastery of the form. His published works include: A woman of honour (1883), Airs from Arcady (1884), The Midge (1886) and In Partnership(1889). As a playwright, he is mainly known for Tower of Babel.
The work upon which his fame mainly rests was all produced within a period of less than 15 years as he died at the early age of 41, in 1896. The Poem…
The poet explains the importance of planting a tree and explains the fact that planting a tree has ecological, social and economic advantages. It is surprising that the poet in his young age could see the importance of trees what the world could understand after the hundred years and awaken to destruction gradually brought by deforestation. The poem gives the message that trees are not important only for the present but the future of Earth depends on them. He could visualise that our future depends on forests. They not only beautify the surroundings but purify air and provide us with wood, timber, fruits and medicines. Without trees, the earth will be barren, and it will become a deserted barren land. The Poem in Detail… STANZA 1: The poet puts a question in the beginning What a man plants who plants a tree? He answers the question by describing the things being planted along with planting a tree. According to him, he who plants a tree, plants a friend of sun and sky. Sun and sky are its friends because in growing it needs both and in return when it grows tall, it provides the shade, rains and oxygen, which help humanity and advance the benefits of sun and sky.
The tree is then compared to a flag of free breeze. The leaves of a tree, flutter like a flag and provide cool breeze to us. When the tree grows taller, it looks like an arrow of beauty reaching the skies. The man plants the tree for the mother bird, which makes its nest in the towering high branches of the tree for its young ones and sings to them with a soft gentle voice in the light. The bird’s high-pitched tone adds to the pleasant harmony of the universe. STANZA 2: Again, the poet asks what he plants who plants a tree, then he replies that one who plants a tree, plants cool and tender rain. It is well established fact that for rains, trees are needed. Lack of trees means lack of rain. It will bear seed and buds in the future. After many years the old trees will wither away, and these seeds will grow into new trees and a dense forest will emerge. This is symbolic of birth, death and rebirth. In this way trees make the surrounding beautiful. The man who plants a tree inherits a forest. It will provide crops to the future generations the benefits of trees will be reaped and enjoyed by posterity. STANZA 3:
The same question is put by the poet in the third stanza but in this stanza the poet becomes more philosophical. According to him, a man who plants a plant it with a sense of loyalty and love for his family and the entire universe because the tree is not planted only for his benefit, it is for the benefit of all. There is a civic good in planting a tree. A country’s growth and development depends on the wealth of its trees. He knows that by planting a tree, he is helping his nation’s growth from one corner to another.
Thus, the world’s prosperity and peace is represented in planting a tree. LITERARY DEVICES: (i) The general pattern followed in the poem is by raising a question and answering it. This technique is known as Hypophora or Antipophora. (ii) The poet does not have a particular rhyming scheme but has used rhyme to add to the poem’s effect and this use has added to the poem’s lyrical quality. (iii) The poet uses alliteration. This figure of speech carries close repetition of consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words. E.g. friend of sun and sky. In hushed and helping twilight heard. (iv) The figure of speech Metonymy is also used in the poem. It is a figure of speech in which a thing or a concept is called not by its name but rather by a metonym, that is, by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept, Ex. Cool shade, tender rain, a friend of sun and sky etc. (v) The most important aspect of the poem is the poet’s futurist thought regarding ecology and environment as the poem was written at least hundred years before the thought of saving the environment and regarding ecology stirred in the minds of people. It has depicted the tree as the symbol of all that is good in our lives.
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