English Literature Made Easy for Students

A Nation’s Strength — Detailed Summary A Nation’s Strength by Ralph Waldo Emerson A Nation’s Strength is a patriotic poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The poem deals with a very important question: What really makes a nation strong, powerful and great?   The poet rejects the commonly held ideas that wealth, military power, pride or material prosperity can make a nation permanently strong. According to Emerson, the real strength of a nation lies in its brave, truthful, honest, hardworking and self-sacrificing people .   The poem begins with a series of rhetorical questions. The poet compares a nation to a great building and asks what makes its pillars high and its foundations strong. He also asks what gives a nation enough strength to face and resist the enemies surrounding it. Through these questions, Emerson prepares the reader to think deeply about the real basis of national greatness. In the second stanza, the poet rejects gold as the source of a nation's...

Television: What can a television do to children… Class VIII: Stanza 1: “The most important thing…..the idiot thing at all.” The poet Ronald Dahl appeals to the parents in the most emphatic manner that the children should not be allowed to watch television. It would be better if a TV set is not installed in the house. Stanza 2 : In almost every house, the children are seen glued to the screen of the TV. They are so much lost in watching the programmes that their mouths remain gaping and eyes fixed to the screen until they seem to be popping out of their sockets. The children watch TV in different postures, i.e. in half-lying position while relaxing and in some odd manner also. In the last line of this stanza, the poet humorously points out the seriousness of the matter by saying that a dozen eyeballs were found scattered on the floor in a house the previous week. Stanza 3: They sit and keep on staring until they get fully lost in the visuals. They sit fixedly at one place a...