English Learning

THE NIGHT AT THE HOTEL - SIEGFRIED LENZ The night receptionist regretfully shrugged his shoulders. 'It's all we have available ,' he said. 'And at this late hour you won't find a single anywhere. It's up to you , of course, if you want to try other hotels. Let me tell you, though, even this free bed in a double room will no doubt be gone should you decide to come back for it later.' 'Very well,' Schwamm said, 'I'll take it. Only. I'm sure you'll understand, I should like to know with whom I am sharing the room. Not that I'm afraid, I have no reason to be. Is my partner - as I suppose one might almost call a person with whom one is to spend a night-already in the room?' 'Yes. He's probably asleep.'    Schwamm  filled out the registration forms and handed them back to the receptionist: then he mounted the stars. As he came within sight of the room number,   Schwamm instinctively slowed down, held his breath in the ho...

The Inchcape Rock No stir in the air, no stir in the sea,  The ship was as still as she could be. Her sails from heaven received no motion. Her keel was steady in the ocean. Without either sign or sound of their shock. The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell. They did not move the Inchcape Bell. The good old Abbot of Aberbrothok. Had placed that bell on the Inchcape Rock; On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung. And over the waves its warning rung. When the rock was hid by the surges' swell. The mariners heard the warning bell: And then they knew the perilous Rock. And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok. The sun in heaven was shining gay. All things were joyful on that day; The sea-birds screamed as they wheeled round. And there was joyance in their sound. The buoy of the Inchcape Bell was seen. A darker speck on the ocean green; Sir Ralph the Rover walked his deck. And he fixed his eyes on the darker speck. He felt the cheering power of sp...

Six and Out The pitch was only smooth in parts; It sank at either crease, And motor vans and bakers' carts At times disturbed the peace. The bowlers found it hard to hit The lamp-post's slender stem, The broader wicket, opposite, Was cleared at 6 p.m. It was a keen, determined school, Unorthodox and free; Harsh circumstance oft made the rule, And not the M.C.C. The scorer, seated by the wall, Kept up a fire of talk; He was both umpires, crowd, and all, And plied a busy chalk. So, standing, musing on the scene, I let the moments pass: How well he drove it to the screen ..... And then-the crash of glass! I watched the players as they ran, And heard, while yet they fled, The loud voice of an angry man, The law's majestic tread.                                                                   ...

MESSIAH OF THE HUMBLE By Shyamal Roy Beggars are a faceless entity in India, their presence only distinguishable by a whining voice or a sleeve plucked by a grimy hand. One hardly takes a second look at them. But not Shyam Bandopadhyay of Salika, Howrah. To him they are very much part of the society and, therefore, have the right to be so identified. It is not surprising, that beggars are his subject to an unending study. An accounts clerk with the Calcutta State Transport Corporation, ‘Bhikhari Shyam,’- as he is better known, is the founder of the unique organization, perhaps the only one of its kind in the world- the Beggars’ Research Bureau. For the past 20 years, he has been collecting statistics on these hapless people in Calcutta and Howrah and 30,000 individual case histories, that he claims to have chronicled so far, reveal some hitherto unkown facts about beggars. The data reveals that for the vast majority of people who vote our leaders into power, the only means of livelihoo...

Mallika  Don't call my daughter Mallika, Call her by any other name ..... Don't call my daughter Mallika It only increases my pain.... And brings to my mind  Things long forgot The years pass by so fast  And yet a whiff of the summer skies Brings Mallika's name to my heart. Perhaps you'll smile at a story  That begins-so ordinarily .... It began the day Sanat Da brought his child bride home And we all flocked around to see. Mallika was a child bride-innocence still touched her face, And yet beside her husband-she was a veritable image of grace. Sanat Da's body was twisted, He had never been able to walk He lay on a bed on the verandah of his house And wrote and read. Teaching the village kids Whenever the mood took him And sometimes gazing-just gazing at the blue skies. The palm trees, the fleecy clouds .... Sometimes just tormented by thought. Mallika's parents were desperately poor And they had eleven more mouths to feed. They would have married Mallika off to...

Night of the Scorpion I rememeber the night my mother  Was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours Of steady rain had driven him To crawl beneath a sack of rice. Parting with his poison flash  Of diabolic tail in the dark room he risked the rain again. The peasants came like swarms of flies  and buzzed the Name of God a hundred times  to paralyse the Evil One. With candles and with lanterns  throwing giant scorpion shadows  on the mud-baked walls  they searched for him: he was not found. They clicked their tongues. With every movement that the scorpion made  his poison moved in mother's blood, they said. May he sit still, they said. May the sins of your previous birth be burned away tonight, they said. May your suffering decrease  the misfortunes of your next birth, they said. May the sum of evil  balanced in this unreal world against the sum of good become diminished by your pain. May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of am...

 THE ROAD NOT TAKEN Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,  And sorry I could not travel both  And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down on as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence; Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by,  And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost  For Solved exercises of this poem, click on the link below: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJTgYmbQGweWg7n1IMh3PCA/join

The Eagle and the Beetle A beetle loved a certain hare And wandered with him everywhere; They went to fairs and feasts together,  Took walks in any kind of weather,  Talked of the future and the past  On sunny days or overcast,  But, since their friendship was so pleasant,  Lived for the most part in the present.  One day, alas, an eagle flew Above them, and before they knew What cloud had shadowed them, the hare Hung from her talons in mid-air.  'Please spare my friend,' the beetle cried.  But the great eagle was sneered with pride: 'You puny, servile, cloddish bug - Go off and hide your ugly mug.  How do you dare assume the right To meddle with my appetite?  This hare's my snack. Have you not heard I am the great god Zeus's bird?  Nothing can harm me, least of all A slow, pathetic, droning ball.  Here, keep your friend's head' And she tore The hare's head off, and swiftly bore His bleeding torso to her nest,  Ripped off ...

                                         AT YUMTHANG I stand here at the edge of the sky  Fields of flowers extend about my feet.  Release the string, let your spirits fly In its own course, in its own beat.    My vision is awashed in the clear summer light I'm reclined between the river and the mountainside A corner of my eye is sparkling with the snowy white  Above me is the endless sky opening wide.  So far away what do I care  Of life's many burdens and life's cherished goal.  If only you were here and I could share This lightness-this lifting and rising of soul.  -Guru T. Ladhaki For Solved Exercises of this poem, click on the link below: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJTgYmbQGweWg7n1IMh3PCA/join

Enemies, People -Yevgeny Yevtushenko In ’41, Mama took me back to Moscow. There I saw our enemies for the first time. If my memory is right, nearly twenty thousand German war prisoners were to be marched in a single column through the streets of Moscow. The pavements swarmed with onlookers, cordoned off by soldiers and police. The crowd were mostly women Russian women with hands roughened by hard work, lips untouched by lipstick and thin, hunched shoulders which had borne half the burden of the war. Every one of them must have had a father or a husband, a brother or a son killed by the Germans. They gazed with hatred in the direction from which the column was to appear. At last we saw it. The generals marched at the head, massive chins stuck out, lips folded disdainfully, their whole demeanour meant to show superiority over their plebeian victors. The women were cleanching their fists. It was all the soldiers and policemen could do to hold them back. They saw German sol...

No Men Are Foreign Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes Like ours: the land our brothers walk upon Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie. They, too, aware of sun and air and water, Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d. Their hands are ours, and in their lines we read A labour not different from our own. Remember they have eyes like ours that wake Or sleep, and strength that can be won By love. In every land is common life That all can recognise and understand. Let us remember, whenever we are told To hate our brothers, it is ourselves That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn. Remember, we who take arms against each other It is the human earth that we defile. Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence Of air that is everywhere our own, Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange. - James Kirkup For Solved Exercises of this poem, click on the link below: https://www.youtube.com/chan...