Question

Poet: "Who art thou?"
Rain: "I am the poem of the earth."
Poet: "Why have you come here?"
Rain: "To beautify my origin. I also want to give life to unborn seeds."

A poet asked about the rain __________[1][21]. The rain answered that ________[2][22]. The poet again asked it __________[3][23]. The rain replied that ________[4][24]. It further told that _________[5][25].
Read the following dialogue between the poet and the rain, and fill in the blank [5] with the most appropriate option.

A) It also wanted to give life to unborn seeds
B) It also wants to give life to unborn seeds
C) I also want to give life to unborn seeds
D) None of these

Answer 1

Hint: This dialogue is part of a poem “The Voice of Rain” penned down by “Walt Whitman”. The poem is about a conversation between rain and the poet where the rain explains its eternal journey. This question is based on the “Subject-Verb Concord” and “Direct-Indirect Speech” and is to be done by the grammatical rules of tenses and speech.

Complete answer:
The dialog between the poet and the rain are transcribed in the question. That makes it Indirect speech and the rules to transform speech from direct to indirect must be used. Using the rules, it can be answered as follows:
Option (A)- It also wanted to give life to unborn seeds- is correct because the given sentence is in simple present and when converted to indirect speech, it changes to simple past.
Option (B)- It also wants to give life to unborn seeds- is incorrect because it is in the simple present but the required tense is simple past.
Option (C)- I also want to give life to unborn seeds- is incorrect because it is in direct speech but while the required answer must be in indirect speech.
Option (D)- None of these- is incorrect because we already have an answer.

Therefore option ‘A’ is the incorrect answer.

Note: While converting speech from direct to indirect, following rules of transformation must be remembered:

Direct Speech	Indirect Speech
Present simple	Past simple
Present continuous	Past continuous
Present perfect	Past perfect
Past simple	Past perfect
Past Continuous	Past perfect continuous
Future simple	Present Conditional
Future Continuous	Conditional Continuous