Reading Comprehension (CTET Paper-I English): Questions 282 - 289 of 294

When did my childhood go?

Was it the day I ceased to be eleven.

Was it the time I realised that Hell and Heaven,

Could not be found in Geography,

And therefore could not be,

Was that the day!

When did my childhood go?

Was it the time I realised that adults were not

All they seemed to be,

They talked of love an preached of love,

But did not act so lovingly,

Was that the day!

When did my childhood go?

Was it when I found my mind was really mine,

To use whichever way I choose,

Producing thoughts that were not those of

other people

But my own and mine alone

Was that the day!

Where did my childhood go?

It went to some forgotten place.

That is hidden in an infant’s face,

That’s all I know.

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorpes, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip’s farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stoney ways,

In little shaprs and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I bubble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

but I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upom me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under Moon and Stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on Forever.

Alfred Lord Tennyson