These notes follow the 2026-27 session. This page gathers everything you need to revise Time and Time Again by A.K. Ramanujan from the NCERT Class 12 Kaleidoscope textbook: its meaning, its two-movement structure, themes, poetic devices, and complete model answers to the six questions under “Responding to the Poem.”
The poem starts as an easy invitation to listen to the clocktowers of a well-managed city and quietly turns into something else — a meditation on Hindu, Christian, and Muslim communities who live side by side, and on what is lost when one of their towers is silenced. Work through the movement map first, then use the tables for quick revision.
This page is part of the Class 12 English notes on the site.
Know the Poet: A.K. Ramanujan
A.K. Ramanujan was one of India’s finest English-language poets. NCERT introduces him as the scholar-poet best known for pioneering translations of ancient Tamil poetry into modern English.
At the time of his death he was professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago and was recognised as the world’s most profound scholar of South Indian languages and culture; his interests included anthropology and folklore, and he brought all of that learning to his craft as a poet writing in English.
That background explains a lot about this poem. A linguist notices how systems keep their own rules; an anthropologist notices how communities keep their own customs. So it is no surprise that Ramanujan would look at city clocktowers and see communities — each keeping its own time.
NCERT’s suggested reading for this poem lists two of his translation collections, The Interior Landscape and Poems of Love and War, both rooted in the same Tamil literary tradition he studied all his life.
The Poem in Two Movements: What Happens
The poem has no stanzas; it is one long observation that breaks at a single point. The fastest way to hold its shape is to see two movements with a clearly marked turn between them.
- Movement one — the sound of a city. The speaker invites us to listen to the clocktowers of any old, well-managed city as they beat their gongs round the clock, each slightly off the others’ time, deeper or lighter in its bronze.
- The turn. “One day you look up and see one of them / eyeless, silent” — the poem looks up from sound to sight, and picks out a single ruined tower.
- Movement two — the silenced tower. Sky shows through the knocked-out clockwork, and the poet names possible causes: a riot, a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act of nature in a night of lightnings.
The turn is the hinge of the whole poem: before it, the clocks keep time; after it, one clock has lost its face and its voice entirely. That is the shift from normal city sound to destruction.
Movement by Movement Meaning: A Summary
Because the poem has no formal stanzas, it is easiest to follow it as two long movements, each giving you a literal meaning, a set of images, and a suggestion.
First movement: the sound of a divided city
- Literal meaning: The speaker says “Or listen to the clocktowers” and describes their gongs beating round the clock, each “slightly off the others’ time”, deeper or lighter in its bronze, each “beating out a different / sequence each half-hour”. These differences come from “the accidents / of alloy”, “a maker’s shaking hand / in Switzerland”, and “the mutual distances / commemorating a donor’s whim”. In the same breath the poem names “the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance / of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim”. Sometimes the sound is “cut off … by a change of wind, / a change of mind, or a siren”.
- What the images suggest: The clocks are not faulty. Their slight differences are ordinary, human, and accidental — and the poem quietly links those differences to the communities that share the city without ever being perfectly in step.
- Key quotation: “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance / of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim”.
Second movement: the day the clocks fall silent
- Literal meaning: “One day you look up” — the gaze leaves the soundscape — and one tower is “eyeless, silent”, with “a zigzag sky showing / through the knocked-out clockwork”. The cause could be “a riot, / a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act / Of nature in a night of lightnings”.
- What the images suggest: A tower whose face and machinery are gone is a community that has lost its voice. The poem lists human and natural forces side by side, without separating them by blame.
- Key quotation: “eyeless, silent” and “a zigzag sky showing / through the knocked-out clockwork”.
Read the table below as your movement map: the middle row marks the turn at “One day you look up”, and the direction of the table shows the shift from working clocks to a silenced one.
| Movement | What it says | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| First movement | Clocktowers of a well-managed city beat their gongs round the clock, each slightly off the others’ time, shaped by alloy, chance, a donor’s whim and distance. | A city full of sounds that belong together yet differ — like communities living side by side, out of sync but sharing the hour. |
| The turn: “One day you look up” | The speaker stops listening and looks up at the towers. | The poem shifts from general city sound to a single specific sight — from many working clocks to one ruined one. |
| Second movement | One tower is eyeless and silent; sky shows through its knocked-out clockwork, after a riot, a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act of nature. | Destruction has taken a community’s voice; human violence and nature’s fury can both end the sound. |
Themes and the Poet’s Attitude
Time, repetition and the title
The title means “again and again” — exactly what a gong does as it beats round the clock. Every half-hour brings a new sequence, so repetition is the poem’s subject. Against all that repetition the poem sets one final point: the moment a clock stops.
That is why the light title carries a shadow — time keeps returning while one tower’s time has run out.
Communal harmony and disharmony
The poem’s most important move is the single line that joins clock differences to “the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance / of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim”. The towers’ out-of-sync voices become the communities’ coexistence: sometimes feuding, sometimes allied by season, never perfectly in step — yet still part of one well-managed city.
Human violence versus nature’s fury
In the second movement, a destroyed clockwork is blamed on human causes first — “a riot, / a peace-march time bomb” — and only then on “a precise act / Of nature in a night of lightnings”. The poem does not rank the two: both can knock a tower blind and mute. What differs is the word “precise”, reserved for nature alone.
A wistful lament, not condemnation
Nowhere does the poem point at an accused person. Its grief sits in the images (“eyeless, silent”) and its irony in “a peace-march time bomb”. The result is a wistful lament: the poet mourns ruined harmony rather than accusing anyone. That reading settles the attitude question (option iii) later.
| Theme | Evidence from the poem | What the poet is saying |
|---|---|---|
| Time, repetition and the title | “beating their gongs round the clock”; “beating out a different / sequence each half-hour” | Time repeats in circles — until the moment one clock’s time stops. |
| Communal harmony and disharmony | “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance / of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim” | Communities live close together, out of step yet under one city’s sky. |
| Human violence versus nature’s fury | “a riot, / a peace-march time bomb, or a precise act / Of nature” | Both human and natural forces have the power to silence a voice. |
| Loss and lament | “eyeless, silent” | The poet grieves a ruined harmony rather than blaming anyone. |
The Speaker and the Clocks as Characters
A poem with no human characters still has a cast. Here is what fills that role and how the poem gives each element a job.
- The clocktowers act as one collective character: each has its bronze voice, each keeps its own time, and one finally goes “eyeless, silent”. They are the poem’s only voices before destruction.
- The speaker is an anonymous observer who does not explain, only listens and looks: “Or listen” turns directly to us, and “One day you look up” makes the reader turn with the speaker.
- The communities — Hindu, Christian, Muslim — appear in a single phrase, but they are the human story beneath the clocks: the comparison the whole poem stands on.
| Element | What it does | How the poem shows it |
|---|---|---|
| The clocktowers | Collective character whose voices carry the poem | Each has a bronze voice; one ends “eyeless, silent” |
| The speaker | Anonymous observer who draws the reader in | “Or listen”; “One day you look up” |
| Hindu, Christian, Muslim communities | Human reality behind the clock comparison | “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance” |
Poetic Form: Why This Poem Sounds Like Speech
Read the poem aloud and it sounds like a person thinking, not like a song. That effect is deliberate.
The poem is unrhymed free verse: long, flowing sentences with no fixed metre, so the rhythm follows the breath of speech. Enjambment — running a sentence across a line break — keeps the reader moving the way sound drifts across a city; in “each slightly / off the others’ time”, the line breaks mid-phrase so the reader feels the off-beat.
Dashes and interruptions (“a change of wind, / a change of mind”) mimic sounds carried away or cut off by a siren.
| Feature | In this poem | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Unrhymed free verse, long flowing sentences | Sounds like speech, not song |
| Rhyme | None | No regular sound pattern to distract from meaning |
| Rhythm | Follows the speaking voice, not a fixed metre | The reader hears a thinking mind |
| Punctuation | Dashes and interruptions break the line | Mimics sound cut off by wind, a change of mind, or a siren |
Poetic Devices in ‘Time and Time Again’
Every device below is tied to the exact words that create it, so you can quote the line and name the device in one breath.
| Device | Line from the poem | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Enjambment | “each slightly / off the others’ time” | The line breaks mid-phrase, so “slightly” hangs in the air — the reader feels the off-beat instead of just hearing about it. |
| Personification | “eyeless, silent” | A clocktower is described as if it were a blinded, voiceless person, so the reader grieves for it like a victim. |
| Visual imagery | “a zigzag sky showing / through the knocked-out clockwork” | An exact mental picture of the hole in the tower; the jagged zigzag of visible sky makes the damage feel raw. |
| Irony | “a peace-march time bomb” | Peace and a bomb cannot go together; the phrase exposes how violent the age is even in the name of peace. |
Five Lines That Carry the Meaning
Memorise these five short lines and you can answer most of the textbook’s questions with your own explanation wrapped around a quotation.
| Line from the poem | What it shows | Where to use it |
|---|---|---|
| “Or listen to the clocktowers / of any old well-managed city” | An easy, spoken invitation; the poem begins as a city soundscape | Question 1 — first impressions |
| “beating their gongs round the clock” | The title’s “time and time again” made literal: the gong repeats all day | Question 2 — the title’s turning point |
| “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance / of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim” | The implicit comparison: out-of-sync clocks = out-of-sync communities | Question 3 — why the clocks differ |
| “a precise act / Of nature in a night of lightnings” | Nature’s exact, law-bound power, set against human accidents | Question 4 — why “precise” |
| “eyeless, silent” | The cost of destruction spoken with grief, not blame | Question 5 — the poet’s attitude |
(Question 6 builds on the same evidence: the poem names “a riot” and “a precise act / Of nature” in one breath, which is exactly the position the question asks about.)
Working Through the Textbook’s Six Questions
All six questions come from the “Responding to the Poem” set that accompanies this poem, and every quotation you need sits on the poem’s page. You can also check the poem in its original layout in the official NCERT Kaleidoscope textbook PDF. Each model answer below gives the reasoning and a line to quote.
Question 1: What did you think the poem was about when you read the first few lines?
Answer: A good first impression is to say honestly what the opening suggests. “Or listen to the clocktowers / of any old well-managed city” reads like a casual invitation to share a city sound, so most readers think the poem is about city life, bells, and the passing of time.
Only when the ruin arrives does the reader revise that first impression and see that the clocks stood for people. Answer in one or two sentences naming that surprise.
Question 2: From which line does the import of the title strike the reader?
Answer: The title clicks at “beating their gongs round the clock” — “clock” makes the time connection literal, and the gongs’ endless repetition carries the “again” of “Time and Time Again”. The line “beating out a different / sequence each half-hour” repeats the idea: a sequence beginning again every thirty minutes.
The import strikes when the poem makes time physical in the image of the beating gong.
Question 3: What makes for the differences between the timekeeping of the various clocks? What is the implicit comparison?
Answer: The poem gives three causes: “the accidents / of alloy” (the metal that makes each bell deeper or lighter), “a maker’s shaking hand / in Switzerland” (chance in manufacturing), and “the mutual distances / commemorating a donor’s whim” (where a tower stands and why it exists).
The implicit comparison is between these slightly out-of-step clocks and the communities — Hindu, Christian, and Muslim — who live close together yet never fully in step, bound by “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance”. Use a two-step structure: first the clock facts, then the human meaning.
| Clock-making detail | What it does to the clock | Human counterpart in communal life |
|---|---|---|
| The alloy of the bronze | Makes each bell deeper or lighter in tone | Each community has its own character and voice, audible in its own register |
| A maker’s shaking hand in Switzerland | Adds an accident of manufacture to the clock | Chance and history shape communities as much as intention does |
| A donor’s whim | Decides where a tower stands and why it exists | Individual choices and memories leave permanent traces on a community |
| The mutual distances between towers | Sets how far each chime travels before it is heard | Communities stay side by side yet separated — near enough to coexist, far enough to differ |
Read the table as the poem’s logic: every “accident” of the clock has a quiet counterpart in how communities actually live together.
Question 4: Why is the act of nature described as ‘precise’?
Answer: “Precise” is chosen because it contrasts with everything human in the first movement. Clock-making depends on accidents — alloy, a shaking hand, a whim. Nature, however, acts by exact physical law; lightning follows rules that do not vary. The word is also deliberately cold: it keeps nature from being sentimentalised.
A “precise act / Of nature” can destroy a tower as completely as a riot, without anger — exactness makes it no less destructive. This is the edge case students often miss: the poet separates “a riot” from “a precise act / Of nature” because human violence is blameable, while nature’s fury is not, yet both are deadly.
Question 5: Which of the following reflects the poet’s attitude towards communal disharmony? (i) Critical condemnation (ii) Helpless acceptance (iii) Wistful lament
Answer: (iii) Wistful lament. The poem never names an accused party, so it is not critical condemnation; and it clearly grieves the silenced tower, so it is not helpless acceptance. The tone words — “eyeless, silent” — and the bitter irony of “a peace-march time bomb” both mourn a harmony that has been lost.
The poet’s stance is regret, not attack: a wistful lament.
Question 6: Is the poet’s attitude a representation of how the average Indian feels both towards human violence and nature’s fury?
Answer: This is an open question, so a complete answer qualifies the claim.
Partly yes: the speaker is an ordinary city observer — “you look up”, not a hero or a politician — and he records human violence (“a riot”) and nature’s fury (“a night of lightnings”) with the same quiet attention, which may well match how many people take both kinds of disaster as recurring facts of life.
Partly no: one poem cannot speak for every Indian; different people grieve, tremble, or protest in different ways. The strongest answer says the poet gives a representative rather than a universal portrait, and backs that with the two causes named in successive lines.
Common Mistakes Students Make With This Poem
These five misreadings are the ones that most often weaken an otherwise good answer.
| Mistake | Correction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| “The title just means ‘repeatedly’.” | The title is also literal: gongs beat time “again” with every round of the clock. | The whole poem turns on clocks, so the idiom is grounded in an actual machine keeping time. |
| “The clocks are broken or faulty.” | The clocks are working; each just keeps its own time. | The poem lists causes — alloy, chance, whim, distance — not defects; variety is the point. |
| “The poet insults the Swiss maker.” | The shaking hand is one accident among many, listed without blame. | Every cause is given the same neutral phrasing; none is mocked. |
| “The poet condemns communal violence.” | The attitude is a wistful lament, not condemnation. | No one is accused; the irony of “a peace-march time bomb” mourns more than it attacks. |
| “Nature’s lightning is just another act of violence.” | The poem separates “a riot” from “a precise act / Of nature”. | “Precise” marks nature’s law-bound exactness, the opposite of human accident. |
Revision Tips: Writing Complete Answers
- Quote before you explain. Put a short line from the poem in quotation marks, then say in your own words what it shows. A quotation with no explanation does nothing for the answer.
- Explain the comparison in two steps. First say what the clocks do; then say what the communities do. The poem’s logic always moves from clock to people, so your answer should too.
- When a question asks for attitude, name it and then prove it. Say “wistful lament” and support it with tone words like “eyeless, silent” and the irony of “a peace-march time bomb”.
- Use the two-movement structure as your paragraph plan. Paragraph one: the sound of working clocks and what it suggests. Paragraph two: the silenced tower and what was lost. That shape fits almost any long answer on this poem.
- Answer opinion questions honestly and in balance. Question 6 wants both sides and a qualification, not one absolute sentence.
One-Page Revision Recap
If you have only a few minutes, this table is the whole poem.
| Aspect | In one line |
|---|---|
| Poem and poet | “Time and Time Again” by A.K. Ramanujan, scholar-poet and translator of ancient Tamil poetry |
| Form | Unrhymed free verse; long sentences that sound like speech |
| Structure | Two movements, turning at “One day you look up” |
| Main themes | Time and repetition; communal harmony and disharmony; human violence versus nature’s fury |
| Key lines | “beating their gongs round the clock”; “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance”; “eyeless, silent” |
| Attitude | A wistful lament — grief for a ruined harmony, not blame |
Memory device: remember the poem as Clocks – Communities – Catastrophe. The chimes of the clocks lead to the communities that share the city, and the catastrophe of a silenced tower shows what happens when that sharing breaks. Three C words, and you have the whole argument.
For the same kind of line-by-line help, see the notes on The Trees in the Class 12 English section, open the Class 12 notes hub, or browse the CBSE notes library for other chapters.
Quick Questions Students Ask
What does the title ‘Time and Time Again’ actually mean?
The title means “again and again”, and it is literal: the gongs of the clocktowers repeat their beat round the clock, returning every half-hour. The shadow in the title is the ending — one tower’s time stops, so the repetition that seemed endless finally breaks.
What is the implicit comparison in ‘Time and Time Again’?
The implicit comparison is between the clocktowers and the communities of a city. Just as each clock is slightly off the others’ time, so Hindu, Christian, and Muslim communities live close together yet never perfectly in step, bound by “perennial feuds and seasonal alliance”.
Why does the poet describe the act of nature as ‘precise’?
Because nature follows exact physical law, unlike human clock-making, which depends on accidents like a maker’s shaking hand or a donor’s whim. “Precise” also keeps nature unsentimental — its exact, law-bound force can destroy a tower as fully as any riot.
Is the poet’s attitude towards communal disharmony helpless acceptance or a wistful lament?
It is a wistful lament. The poet never accuses anyone, and he clearly grieves the silenced tower in words like “eyeless, silent”. Sadness and regret, not blame and not indifference, set the tone.
What do ‘eyeless’ and ‘silent’ suggest about the destroyed clock tower?
The words personify the tower as a blinded, voiceless person. What could have been a neutral description becomes a portrait of loss: the tower that once “saw” the city and “spoke” the hour has been reduced to a shell — the community’s voice is gone with it.
Reference: NCERT Class 12 English Kaleidoscope textbook, chapter Time and Time Again.
Explore Class 12 English Notes
- Class 12 English Notes
- Class 12 CBSE Notes
- CBSE Notes for Classes 1 to 12
- Previous: Trees
Class 12 English on LearnCBSE:
Related chapters:
- Poems by Milton notes
- Poems by Blake notes
- A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment notes
Official source: download the NCERT textbook free from ncert.nic.in.