‘He’ refers to the very young soldier who is asleep in the valley.

He may catch a cold as he is lying under the open sky. The poet asks Nature to keep him warm. Rimbaud by requesting Nature to keep the soldier warm portrays the futility of war ironically. Death is inevitable and if death embraces a person, then Nature cannot make that person alive again. A cold lifeless body can never receive warmth again. Even the creator cannot bring a dead person back to life. The irony in the request expresses the dark side of war and the consequence of violence.


“The humming insects don’t disturb his rest;”-Who rests and where? What put him to rest? Why can’t the insects disturb his rest?

Here, a young soldier is at rest. The young soldier is resting in a small green valley.

The two bullets on the soldier’s body put him to rest.

The young soldier is lying dead in a valley. The youth has died with his dream unfulfilled and life unlived. Therefore nothing could awake him. As the soldier was having his eternal sleep, the constant humming of the insects around him could not disturb him.

“He sleeps in sunlight …”-Who is the person referred to here? Where does he sleep and how? What does the word sleep’ indicate in this poem?

“In his side there are two red holes.”-Who is the person referred to here? What do the ‘two red holes’ signify? What attitude of the poet to war is reflected here?

Give a description of the valley as found in Rimbaud’s poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’.

The word “sun’ is repeatedly used in the poem-explain the significance of it.

How does the poet express the futility of war through his poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’? What message does he want to convey?

How does the soldier lie in Asleep in the Valley’?

How does this picture of the soldier describe the tragedy of war? Explain.

Bring out the irony of the poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’.

Look at the word ‘asleep’. What do we normally associate with the word? When does the reader recognise that the soldier is asleep in a different sense?

Comment on Rimbaud’s treatment of symbol and imagery in the poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’.

Nature plays an important role in the poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’ by Arthur Rimbaud- Justify.

The poem ends a little abruptly but leaves the reader with utter surprise and shock Discuss.

The poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’ rests on two contrasting pictures. Discuss the use of two contrasting pictures in the poem,

What is the occasion of the poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’? Give a simile used by the poet in the poem. Are there other comparisons in the poem?

Give the substance of Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare.

Discuss the central idea of the poem, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?.

Discuss the appropriateness of the title of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”-Who makes the comparison? Who is compared to a summer’s day’? What are the blemishes of summer?