The Laburnum Top Questions & Answers | Class 11 English | CBSE NCERT

Correct option: (b). The laburnum is 'silent, quite still / In the afternoon yellow September sunlight'.

Correct option: (c). Yellowing leaves and fallen seeds mark early autumn, presenting the tree as nearly dead before the bird arrives.

Correct option: (b). The stillness lasts only 'Till the goldfinch comes, with a twitching chirrup'.

Correct option: (b). The bird's abrupt arrival at the branch end startles the silent scene; the word itself enacts that sudden shock.

Correct option: (b). The pale yellow light and yellowing leaves deepen the drowsy, faded, almost death-like quiet of the tree.

Correct option: (b). The short, jerky chirrup and the sudden appearance jolt both the tree and the reader out of stillness.

Correct option: (c). The goldfinch's movement is directly compared to a lizard's using 'as'.

Correct option: (b). 'Sleek', 'alert' and 'abrupt' capture the lizard's smooth, quick, watchful darting.

Correct option: (b). 'A machine starts up / Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings', making the whole tree tremble.

Correct option: (d). The tree, alive with the fledglings' noise, is the engine of the goldfinch's family.

Correct option: (a). The sound of the words imitates the burst of chirping that starts up in the tree.

Correct option: (a). The repeated 't'/'tr' sounds make the reader feel the vibrating, thrilling tree.

Correct option: (c). Continuing the engine image, she fuels her fledglings with food before flying out.

Correct option: (b). The dark and light bars look like a mask that marks her identity as a goldfinch while camouflaging her.

Correct option: (c). The hyphenated onomatopoeic words imitate her delicate, mysterious parting call.

Correct option: (a). 'The infinite' is the limitless sky into which she disappears.

Correct option: (b). 'Subsides' means sinks back; the tree's brief life was wholly dependent on the bird's presence.

Correct option: (c). The eerie whistle and the sinking back into emptiness leave a hushed, mysterious, faintly melancholy close.

The poem begins with the laburnum 'silent, quite still' in the September afternoon, and ends with it subsiding 'to empty'. The two pictures match: the tree is lifeless before the goldfinch arrives and lifeless again after she leaves, so the poem has a circular, frame-like structure.

The bird's movement is compared to that of a lizard — 'sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt'. The basis of the simile is the smooth, quick, watchful and sudden way in which a lizard slides into a hedge, just as the goldfinch slips abruptly into the thickness of the laburnum branches.

The engine image is evoked because the whole tree, on the mother bird's arrival, throbs with mechanical energy — chitterings, tremors of wings and trillings — as if a machine has started up. The tree is 'the engine of her family', and the goldfinch is like the stoker who feeds and powers it.

The dominant colour is yellow. It appears in the 'afternoon yellow September sunlight', the 'few leaves yellowing', and the goldfinch itself, which has yellow feathers on its wings. The colour binds the bird, the tree and the season into one glowing picture.

The goldfinch's face is streaked with dark and pale bars, which look like a mask. This mask is her 'identity' — the distinctive marking by which she is recognised — while also concealing her, protecting her and her nest from the eyes of predators.

A laburnum is a short tree with hanging branches, yellow flowers and poisonous seeds, as glossed in the textbook note. In the poem, its top is silent and still in September, with a few leaves yellowing and all its seeds already fallen.

The poem is rich in sound words: 'chirrup', 'chitterings', 'trillings', 'tremor', 'trembles', 'thrills', 'whistle-chirrup whisperings'. Together they recreate the burst of bird-song that starts up like a machine when the goldfinch arrives.

The movement words include 'twitching', 'suddenness', 'startlement', 'enters', 'tremor', 'trembles', 'flirts out', 'stokes', 'launches away' and 'subsides'. They chart the bird's quick actions and the tree's responses from stillness to vibration to emptiness.

Her arrival transforms the silent, still tree into a throbbing centre of life. A machine of chitterings, wing-tremors and trillings starts up, the whole tree trembles and thrills, and the tree becomes the working engine of her family.

As soon as the bird launches away 'towards the infinite', the laburnum subsides to empty. The noise, movement and excitement vanish, and the tree returns to the silent, lifeless stillness of the poem's opening.

The bird is watchful of danger to her young and slips in quickly, without warning, exactly as a lizard does. Her entry is deliberately sudden and cautious so that she does not draw attention to the nest hidden in the thickness of the tree.

The phrase suggests that the bird flies off into the vast, boundless sky beyond the tree — a journey into the unknown distance. It hints at mystery and freedom, and marks her complete departure from the world of the laburnum.

The beginning is hushed, sleepy and sombre, with a silent, seedless tree in yellow September light. The mood suddenly lifts to excitement and energy when the goldfinch arrives and the tree trembles with song, before sinking back into quiet emptiness at the end.

On the mother bird's arrival, her fledglings erupt into feeding noises and wing-flapping, and the tree hums like a running machine. Since she triggers and feeds — 'stokes' — all this activity, she is called the engine of her family.

The poem uses a simile in 'sleek as a lizard', comparing the bird's smooth, sudden movement to a lizard's. It uses metaphor in 'a machine starts up' and 'It is the engine of her family', where the singing, throbbing tree is compared to a working engine.

'Startlement' conveys the sudden shock of surprise — of the still tree, and of the reader — when the goldfinch's twitching chirrup breaks the silence. It captures a moment of alarm and astonishment before the bird slips into the branches.

She pauses at the branch-end to survey the surroundings, showing her barred face like an identity mask before she departs. The flirtatious, sidling movement is also cautious: she checks that it is safe to launch away from the nest.

September places the scene in early autumn, when the laburnum's flowers are gone, its seeds have fallen and its leaves are yellowing. The season of decline makes the tree seem near death and heightens the contrast with the burst of life the goldfinch brings.

The 'she' is the goldfinch, a small singing bird with yellow-feathered wings. She is the mother of the fledglings nesting in the tree; the laburnum shelters her family, and she in turn fills it with life, movement and song.

A suitable alternative title is 'The Engine of Her Family', since the poem's most striking idea is the transformation of the tree into a throbbing engine of life by the mother goldfinch. It highlights the central metaphor around which the whole poem turns.

Before the goldfinch arrives, the laburnum top is 'silent, quite still' in the yellow September afternoon sunlight — a few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen, the tree looking abandoned and almost lifeless. After the bird launches away, the laburnum 'subsides to empty', returning to the same deathly quiet. The contrast between the two still pictures frames the poem and shows that the tree's moment of glory depended wholly on the bird: she alone brings it energy, sound and purpose.

The middle section of the poem is a study in animation. The goldfinch's arrival is rendered through quick verbs — 'twitching', 'enters' — and her entry triggers 'a machine' of 'chitterings', 'a tremor of wings' and 'trillings'. Sound-heavy, alliterative words like 'trembles and thrills' make the tree vibrate on the page. The tree is metaphorically an engine that the mother bird stokes, so its stillness is replaced by mechanical, humming life. The transformation is complete: the silent, seedless tree becomes the noisy, working heart of a bird family.

The poet writes that the goldfinch is 'sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt' as she enters the thickness of the branches. The lizard image is chosen for its precise qualities: sleekness (smooth, glossy movement), alertness (constant watchfulness for danger), and abruptness (a sudden darting entry without warning). A lizard slipping into a shady crevice is the perfect model for the bird's cautious, rapid disappearance into the concealment of the leaves, where her nest lies hidden.

When the goldfinch enters the tree, 'a machine starts up / Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings', and the tree is called 'the engine of her family' which the bird 'stokes it full'. The mechanical imagery converts the scattered noises of fledglings into a single organised power-source, emphasising the tree's total transformation from stillness to working energy. It also presents the mother bird as the operator — the stoker — who feeds and runs the engine, showing her as the source of her family's life. The image is original and precise, fusing the natural world with industrial energy.

The poem is built like a filmed sequence of a few minutes. It opens on the stillness before, moves through the sudden arrival — 'a twitching chirrup', 'a suddenness, a startlement' — the lizard-like entry, the explosion of family noise, the mother stoking the engine, her flirt-out to the branch-end where she shows her barred face identity mask, and finally her launch 'towards the infinite'. The frame closes as the tree subsides to empty. Nothing is left out of the small drama, and the strict chronological order gives the poem the immediacy of an eyewitness account.

Sound is the poem's chief means of expressing life. The silence of the opening is broken by the 'twitching chirrup', and then by the machine of 'chitterings', 'tremor of wings' and 'trillings' — onomatopoeic words that mimic bird-noise. The alliteration of 'trembles and thrills' and the hissing sibilance of 'whistle-chirrup whisperings' keep the tree audibly alive. The vowel music of 'eerie delicate' adds a mysterious note to her departure call. When the sounds stop, the poem's world stops too, for the last word is 'empty' — the sound of silence.

At the branch-end, before flying away, the bird shows 'her barred face identity mask'. The goldfinch's face is striped with dark bars, which the poet sees as a mask. The paradox of the phrase is that the mask is at once concealment and identification: it hides her true self from predators and prying eyes, yet it is precisely the marking by which her species and identity are known. In the poem's small drama, it is her final signature — the last image she leaves the reader before vanishing 'towards the infinite'.

Yellow is the dominant colour and the poem's unifying thread. The September afternoon sunlight is 'yellow', a few leaves are 'yellowing', and the goldfinch, the agent of change, carries yellow feathers on her wings. Yellow is also the colour of the laburnum's own flowers, though they are already past and its seeds fallen. The repeated colour links tree, bird and season: the dying tree and the living bird share one golden hue, blending the imagery of decline and of vitality into a single glowing canvas.

The goldfinch is characterised entirely through her actions and effects. We see her in the 'twitching chirrup', the lizard-like entry, the starting of the machine, the stoking of the engine, the flirt to the branch-end, the barred face identity mask, and the 'eerie delicate whistle-chirrup whisperings' before her launch. She is alert, quick, energetic, protective and mysterious. Her only described physical feature is the barred mask; her character — the life-giver of the tree — emerges from what she does rather than how she looks.

Structurally, the poem has a circular or frame construction. The opening quatrain paints the silent, empty tree — the 'before' picture. The long middle section is kinetic: the bird's arrival, entry, the starting of the machine, the stoking, and her exit preparations, told in swift, enjambed lines. The closing couplet returns to the stillness of the opening, with the tree subsiding 'to empty'. The symmetry — stillness, activity, stillness — throws the middle burst of life into sharper relief, and the single-sentence ending enacts the tree's deflation.

The poem suggests that the mother is the source of her family's life and energy. The fledglings remain invisible in the thickness of the tree, but the moment the mother arrives the hidden family 'starts up' — hungry, excited, alive. She 'stokes it full', feeding her young and keeping the engine of the family running. Her whole visit — alert entry, feeding, careful survey from the branch-end before departure — is a picture of devoted, vigilant parental care, presented without a single sentimental word.

The bird launches away 'towards the infinite', a grand, mysterious phrase for a small bird's flight into the sky. The word lifts the scene beyond the ordinary: the goldfinch leaves the finite, enclosed world of the tree for the boundless expanse of air. It creates a sense of awe and slight mystery — the bird, so precisely observed a moment ago, now vanishes into something immeasurable. It also prepares the final deflation: against the infinite, the laburnum can only subside to empty.

The poem rests on close, almost scientific observation: the September afternoon, the yellowing leaves, the fallen seeds, the exact quality of the bird's chirrup and movement. Yet the poet's imagination transforms these facts through striking comparisons — the lizard simile, the machine and engine metaphors, the identity mask, the flight towards the infinite. Observation supplies the truth of the scene, while imagination supplies its energy and meaning. The result is a nature poem that is both a precise record and a small drama of life.

'Subsides' means to sink down or settle into quiet, like flood-water after a flood or a boiling pan taken off the heat. The word is perfectly apt because the tree's excitement was described as a machine starting up and a trembling and thrilling — an agitation. When the bird goes, all that vibration dies down; the tree 'settles' back into stillness the way an engine dies when the stoker stops feeding it. The word quietly completes the machine metaphor and closes the poem on a note of emptied energy.

The most likeable feature of the poem is its power to make a tiny natural episode vivid and dramatic. The silent tree bursts into a throbbing engine of life at the goldfinch's arrival and sinks back to emptiness at her departure — a complete miniature drama. The soundscape of chitterings and trillings, the perfect lizard simile, and the mysterious flight 'towards the infinite' engage the ear and imagination alike. Above all, the poem makes one look more closely at ordinary nature, revealing how much life one small bird carries into a single afternoon.

The central idea of 'The Laburnum Top' is that life and energy in nature depend on a delicate, momentary presence — here, a mother goldfinch — that can transform stillness into throbbing activity. The poem opens on a laburnum tree that is 'silent, quite still' in the yellow September afternoon: leaves yellowing, seeds fallen, the tree at the season of decline and seemingly lifeless. Then the goldfinch arrives with a twitching chirrup, and the tree is utterly changed — 'a machine starts up' of chitterings, tremors of wings and trillings, the whole tree trembling and thrilling. The tree becomes 'the engine of her family', which she 'stokes full' by feeding her fledglings. When she launches away towards the infinite, the laburnum subsides to empty. The poem thus presents a small, complete cycle of stillness, life and stillness again, and shows that energy, care and vitality can enter a dying world — but not remain there.

The title 'The Laburnum Top' is apt because the whole poem is located on and around the top of one laburnum tree — its silent crown of yellowing leaves in September sunlight, and the sudden life that fills its branches. The tree is the stage on which the entire drama unfolds: it is silent at the start, trembles and thrills when the goldfinch enters, becomes 'the engine of her family', and finally subsides to empty when she leaves. The title also focuses attention on the tree itself rather than on the bird, which suits the poem's real subject — the transformation of the tree from lifelessness to life. The word 'top' is precise, for the action happens at the branch ends and in the thickness of the upper branches, where the nest and the fledglings lie hidden. By naming the tree in the title, Hughes makes the reader watch, as he did, a common tree in an ordinary afternoon, and discover the extraordinary hidden within it.

The poem is built entirely on the contrast between stillness and activity. The opening lines establish the first pole: the laburnum top is 'silent, quite still', with 'a few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen' — a picture of an almost deathly hush in the afternoon yellow sunlight. The arrival of the goldfinch then reverses everything: her 'twitching chirrup' is 'a suddenness, a startlement', and her sleek, lizard-like entry into the thickness starts up 'a machine / Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings — / The whole tree trembles and thrills.' Verbs of motion and sound replace the adjectives of stillness; the tree becomes an engine that the bird stokes full. Even the bird's departure is rendered in movement — she flirts out to a branch-end, shows her barred face identity mask, and launches away towards the infinite. Finally, 'the laburnum subsides to empty': the poem ends where it began, proving that the entire burst of life was a brief, brilliant interlude in the tree's stillness.

The poem is a showcase of sound and figure. It uses a simile in 'sleek as a lizard, and alert, and abrupt' to capture the bird's smooth, watchful, sudden entry. Its central device is metaphor: 'a machine starts up' and 'It is the engine of her family' convert the tree into a machine that the bird 'stokes full', and 'her barred face identity mask' is a metaphor for the bird's striped face, which hides and yet identifies her. Onomatopoeia is everywhere in 'chirrup', 'chitterings' and 'trillings', while alliteration and consonance in 'tremor… trembles and thrills' and 'whistle-chirrup whisperings' mimic the bird-noise. Sibilance in 'sleek… still… September… seeds' slows the opening into hush. Personification appears in the tree that 'trembles and thrills' and later 'subsides'. Together these devices make a five-line-audio-visual experience of a bird's visit.

The poem conveys nature as a scene of quiet, hidden interdependence. The laburnum in September — leaves yellowing, seeds fallen — appears dead, yet it shelters a family of fledglings in its thickness. The mother goldfinch is the hidden world's life-line: her twitching chirrup is the signal that sets off the machine of chitterings and trillings, and she 'stokes' the engine of her family full, feeding her young before resting a moment at the branch-end and launching away towards the infinite. The values the poem teaches are several. It shows devoted parental care: the mother risks exposure every visit, enters alert and abrupt to protect the nest, and works to feed her family. It teaches attentiveness to ordinary nature — a common tree and a small bird contain a complete drama if we watch closely. Finally, it quietly suggests that even a seemingly dead or declining thing can be a home full of life, and that caring energy, however brief its visit, transforms everything it touches.

Although the poem's phrase 'the engine of her family' names the tree, it is really the goldfinch who powers the engine, and the poem depicts her as the source of all its life. Before she comes, the tree is 'silent, quite still', a few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen — nothing stirs. Her arrival is 'a suddenness, a startlement', and the moment she enters the thickness, 'a machine starts up / Of chitterings, and a tremor of wings, and trillings'; the whole tree trembles and thrills. The hidden fledglings, silent in her absence, erupt into hunger and noise at her coming, and she stokes the engine full — feeding them, sustaining them, running the family. Her careful, alert, lizard-like behaviour shows a provider conscious of danger to her brood. When she launches away towards the infinite, the machine stops and the laburnum subsides to empty. The bird, then, is the invisible heart of both tree and family: present, everything throbs; absent, everything stills.

'The Laburnum Top' is a meditation on how brief and fragile the moments of fullness are. The tree's life in the poem lasts exactly as long as the goldfinch's visit: a burst of chitterings, trillings and trembling wings between two silences. Hughes places this visit inside the larger transience of the season itself — September, when the leaves are yellowing and 'all its seeds fallen', the tree already past its flowering and fruiting. Even the mother's own care is momentary: she stokes the engine full, pauses at the branch-end showing her barred face identity mask, and then launches away towards the infinite, leaving the laburnum to subside to empty. The poem neither laments nor resists this transience; it observes it with precision and a kind of wonder. The message is implicit: energy and joy are visitors, not residents; the stillness before and after them is the norm. Because the burst of life is so short, it is also the more precious — the poem makes us value the trembling minutes of a September afternoon.