Question

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an
hundred years hence?

I cannot send you one single flower from this
wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold
from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad.

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant
memories of the vanished flowers of an
hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy
that sang one spring morning, sending its
glad voice across an hundred years.

–“85,”
Rabindranath Tagore

What is the effect of the words "the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years”?

The personification suggests that the happiness of the past is eternal.
The metaphor shows that happiness is “alive” but can only be found in others.
The metaphor illustrates that nothing changes over the course of one hundred years.
The personification allows the reader to imagine life in the past.

Answer 1

The fourth option. The personification ("living joy... sang... sending its glad voice") makes the past feel vivid and immediate, helping the reader imagine and emotionally enter that spring morning.