Poem words

Before you read the poem 'What a Bird Thought' (your book, Poorvi, page 86), page 85 teaches four words. Knowing them makes the poem easy to follow.

Pale means light in colour, not dark. The book's sentence: the colour of the feather was not dark but pale. In the poem, the bird's first home, the egg, is a pale blue shell.

Fluttered means moved lightly and quickly, like a butterfly moving on to a flower. In the poem, the young bird flutters out of its nest for the first time.

At length means at last, or finally, after a long time. The book's sentence says 'Finally, I finished my bird painting', and 'at last' can take the place of 'Finally'. The last stanza of the poem begins 'At length': at last the bird flies beyond the tree.

Labour means hard work. The book's sentence: the pretty flowers were the prize for the gardener's hard work, that is, the gardener's labour. In the poem, the grown bird is ready for grown-up labours: the hard work that adult birds do.