Fog | CBSE Class 10 English Notes
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Who is Carl Sandburg and what is this poem about?
Carl Sandburg is the poet credited at the end of the text. The poem "Fog" is a very short piece describing how fog arrives over a city and harbour, moves silently, and then disappears, compared throughout to the quiet, stealthy movement of a cat.
The poem has only six lines, printed as a single continuous piece without a stanza break in the given text. It uses the picture of a cat to describe the natural phenomenon of fog, built entirely through a single extended comparison rather than through rhyme or a regular metre.
A short glossary note is attached to the poem itself: "on haunches: sitting with knees bent." This single footnote tells us that the poet is thinking of an animal crouching, which supports the cat image that runs through the whole poem.
Because the poem is brief, every word carries weight. Readers are expected to notice how the choice of words such as "little," "silent," and "moves on" builds up the feeling of something quiet, small, and temporary, much like the fog itself, which appears and then vanishes without warning or noise.
What happens in the poem, stanza by stanza?
Part one: the fog arrives (lines 1 to 2)
The poem opens with the simple statement, "The fog comes / on little cat feet." Here the poet tells us directly how the fog arrives: softly and quietly, exactly as a cat would walk on its small, soft feet.
There is no noise, no announcement, no warning. The fog simply appears, the way a cat slips into a room without anyone hearing it come.
This opening line sets up the whole comparison for the rest of the poem. The poet does not use the word "like" or "as," so he never directly says the fog is a cat.
Instead, he gives the fog the very feet of a cat, so that the comparison becomes a part of the fog's own action rather than a separate statement about it.
Part two: the fog waits and watches (lines 3 to 4)
The poem continues, "It sits looking / over harbour and city." The fog is shown as if it were a living creature pausing to observe its surroundings.
It sits, exactly as a cat sits, and it looks over both the harbour and the city below it, as though surveying the whole scene from a height.
This image gives the fog a sense of calm control over the place it covers.
The harbour and the city together suggest a large town by the sea, and the fog is pictured as spreading over both, sitting above them the way a cat might perch somewhere and watch everything beneath it without moving.
Part three: the fog's posture and departure (lines 5 to 6)
The final lines read, "on silent haunches / and then moves on." The word "haunches" refers, according to the glossary note given with the poem, to "sitting with knees bent," which is exactly how a cat rests before it decides to move. The fog is pictured crouched in this way, utterly silent.
Then, just as quietly as it arrived, the fog "moves on." There is no drama in its leaving, no sound, no sudden change.
The poem ends on this quiet note of departure, completing the picture of the fog as a creature that comes, pauses, watches, and leaves, all without being heard.
What poetic devices does the poet use in this poem?
The main device in this short poem is personification, where the fog is given living, animal-like actions. The fog "comes," "sits," "looks," and "moves on," verbs normally used for a living creature, not a weather condition. This brings the fog to life for the reader.
Closely connected to this is an extended metaphor, where the fog is compared throughout to a cat without ever using the words "like" or "as." According to the explanation given alongside the poem, "a metaphor compares two things by transferring a feature of one thing to the other." Here, the cat's feet, its sitting posture, and its silent movement are all transferred onto the fog.
The poem also uses carefully chosen imagery: "little cat feet" gives a visual and tactile picture of softness and smallness; "silent haunches" gives both a visual picture of a crouching posture and an auditory impression, since silence itself is being described.
The word "harbour and city" paints a wide visual scene of a coastal town.
In terms of form, the poem is written in free verse, meaning, as the text explains, "poetry that does not have an obvious rhythm or rhyme." There is no regular rhyme scheme and no fixed metre; the lines vary in length according to the sense rather than any pattern, which suits the quiet, irregular, drifting movement of fog itself.
What are the central images in the poem?
The poem builds its whole effect from a small set of connected images. The first is the image of a cat's feet, small and soft, used to describe how the fog "comes." This single image sets the tone for the comparison between a natural phenomenon and a familiar domestic animal.
The second image is of the fog "sitting," looking "over harbour and city." This gives the fog a position of quiet height and command, as though it were perched somewhere, surveying the town below, much as a cat might sit and watch a room.
The third image is of "silent haunches," the crouched posture of a resting cat, described in the glossary as "sitting with knees bent." This image strengthens the picture of the fog as poised, waiting, and completely without sound.
Finally, the poem closes with the image of departure, "moves on," without any further description. This deliberate lack of detail about how or where the fog goes mirrors the fog's own quiet, undramatic nature, leaving the reader with a sense of stillness rather than action.
How does the poem use free verse?
The text itself raises the question of whether the poem has "a rhyme scheme," and explains that "poetry that does not have an obvious rhythm or rhyme is called 'free verse.'" "Fog" is written in exactly this style.
There is no end rhyme between any of the six lines: "feet," "looking," "city," "haunches," and "on" do not rhyme with one another. There is also no fixed number of syllables or beats in each line, so the poem does not follow a set metre.
This free, unpatterned structure matches the subject of the poem. Fog itself has no fixed shape or set path; it drifts, settles, and lifts without any regular rhythm.
By writing without rhyme or metre, the poet lets the shape of the poem reflect the shapeless, quiet movement of the fog it describes.
The short, simple lines also allow the poem to move quickly from one image to the next: arrival, sitting, watching, and departure, each given in a brief line or two, mirroring how briefly a patch of fog may linger before it moves on and disappears from view.
Why is the comparison between fog and a cat effective?
The comparison works because fog and a cat share several real qualities, even though they are completely different things. Both move quietly: a cat's feet make no sound, and fog arrives without any noise at all.
Both can appear and disappear without warning, slipping in and out of a scene unnoticed.
Both also have a way of settling down and watching. A cat often sits and observes a room from one spot without moving; the fog, in the poem, "sits looking / over harbour and city," doing much the same thing on a much larger scale, covering the whole town rather than a single room.
The posture described as "silent haunches," sitting with "knees bent," also belongs naturally to a cat at rest, poised and ready to move.
By giving the fog this same posture, the poet makes an invisible, shapeless thing feel physically present, almost as though the fog has its own body and its own quiet intentions.
The final action, "moves on," also suits a cat, which leaves a room as silently as it entered. This shared quality of silent, unhurried movement, from arrival to departure, is what makes the cat such a fitting and complete comparison for the fog throughout the poem.
What themes does the poem explore?
The quiet, unnoticed power of nature
The poem shows how a natural event, fog settling over a harbour and city, can happen almost without anyone noticing. It "comes," "sits," and "moves on" without disturbance, suggesting that nature often acts quietly and gently rather than with force or drama.
Transience and change
The fog does not stay. It arrives, pauses briefly to look over the harbour and city, and then "moves on." This brief visit suggests how temporary and changing natural conditions can be, present for a while and then gone, leaving no clear mark of having been there at all.
Connection between the animal world and nature
By comparing the fog to a cat throughout, with its "little cat feet" and "silent haunches," the poem draws a close link between the behaviour of living creatures and natural phenomena. This connection helps the reader understand the unfamiliar, formless fog through the familiar, physical presence of an animal.
The value of close observation
The poem itself is an example of careful observation: watching fog closely enough to notice that it seems to pause and "look" before departing.
The whole piece rewards the reader who, like the poet, is willing to look closely at something as ordinary as weather and find a living quality in it.
What are the key quotations from the poem?
"The fog comes / on little cat feet." These are the opening lines, comparing the fog's silent arrival to the soft footsteps of a cat.
"It sits looking / over harbour and city / on silent haunches" This is the fog pictured watching the town below it, crouched and completely silent.
"and then moves on." This is the poem's final line, describing the fog's quiet, undramatic departure.
These three short quotations between them carry the entire poem: arrival, pause, and departure, each described through the behaviour of a cat. Together they show how the poet builds a complete picture using very few words, letting each phrase do a great deal of work.
The first quotation introduces the governing comparison of the poem, while the second develops it by adding a sense of place, the harbour and the city, and the third closes the poem on the same quiet note on which it began, with the fog leaving as silently as it arrived.
What are the answers to the textbook questions?
Question 1: Sandburg's picture of the fog
(i) Sandburg thinks of the fog as being like a cat, a quiet, soft-footed creature that moves without being heard.
(ii) The fog comes "on little cat feet," meaning it arrives softly and silently, the way a cat walks into a room without making any sound.
(iii) "It" in the third line refers to the fog, which is described as sitting and looking over the harbour and the city.
(iv) The poet never directly says the fog is like a cat, but three things suggest this: first, the fog comes "on little cat feet"; second, it "sits" and rests "on silent haunches," exactly as a cat does; third, it "moves on" quietly afterwards, just as a cat leaves a room without any sound or warning.
Question 2: Metaphors for other things
The text gives one example to show how such a table should be completed: for "Storm," the metaphor animal is a "tiger," which is alike because a storm "pounces over the fields" and "growls," just as a tiger pounces on its prey and growls.
The remaining rows (Train, Fire, School, Home) are left for the student to complete with their own chosen animal metaphors and reasons for the likeness, following the same pattern as the worked Storm example.
For instance, a train might be compared to a galloping horse because of its rushing, rhythmic motion and loud, repeated sound.
The second part of this question asks the student to visualise a storm, its force, its sound, its power, and the sudden calm afterwards, and then to write an original poem comparing the storm to an animal, in the same way that Sandburg compares fog to a cat.
Question 3: Rhyme scheme
The poem does not have a rhyme scheme. The lines do not end in rhyming words, and there is no regular pattern of rhythm or metre. Poetry written in this way, without an obvious rhythm or rhyme, is called free verse, and "Fog" is an example of it.
What should students remember about the structure of this poem?
The poem is extremely short, just six lines, yet it is built with a careful, almost mathematical balance.
The first two lines describe the fog's arrival, the next two describe it watching, and the final two describe its departure.
This three-part movement, come, sit, move on, gives the poem a clear shape despite its lack of rhyme.
Each pair of lines also adds a new piece of the cat comparison: feet in the first pair, sitting posture in the second, and silent movement in the third and final pair.
By the end of the poem, the reader has been given a complete, if brief, picture of a cat's typical behaviour, mapped exactly onto the behaviour of fog.
This structure shows why the poem is often studied as an example of how much can be suggested in very few words.
Students should notice that nothing in the poem is extra; every line contributes directly to building or completing the cat comparison, right up to the quiet final line, "and then moves on."
Glossary
- Fog — a thick cloud of tiny water droplets close to the ground that reduces visibility, described in the poem as moving over a harbour and city.
- Haunches — the given meaning is "sitting with knees bent," the crouched resting posture of an animal such as a cat.
- Harbour — a place on the coast where ships can shelter and dock, mentioned as part of the scene the fog settles over.
- Silent — making no sound at all, used to describe the fog's haunches and its quiet manner of movement.
- Metaphor — a figure of speech that "compares two things by transferring a feature of one thing to the other," as explained alongside the poem.
- Free verse — "poetry that does not have an obvious rhythm or rhyme," the form used in "Fog."
- Personification — giving human or animal qualities and actions, such as sitting and looking, to a non-living thing such as fog.
- Imagery — descriptive language that creates a picture in the reader's mind, such as "little cat feet" or "silent haunches."
- Pounces — used in the Storm/tiger example to describe a sudden, forceful leap, likening the storm's force to that of a tiger.
- Growls — a low, rumbling sound made by an animal, used in the example to describe the sound of a storm compared to a tiger.
- Rhyme scheme — the pattern in which the end sounds of lines in a poem repeat; the poem "Fog" has none.
- Moves on — the phrase describing the fog's quiet departure at the end of the poem, without any sound or disturbance.
Common errors and misconceptions
- Misconception: The poem directly says "the fog is like a cat." Correct: The poet never uses "like" or "as"; the comparison is made entirely through metaphor, by giving the fog a cat's feet, posture, and silent movement.
- Misconception: The poem has a regular rhyme scheme because it is short and neat-looking. Correct: The poem is written in free verse, which has "no obvious rhythm or rhyme."
- Misconception: "Haunches" means the same as "legs" in general. Correct: The glossary gives the specific meaning "sitting with knees bent," describing a crouched resting posture.
- Misconception: The fog is described as noisy or dramatic in its arrival and departure. Correct: The fog is consistently described as quiet and silent, coming on "little cat feet" and leaving with no sound.
- Misconception: The poem describes several different places. Correct: The fog is described as sitting over just "harbour and city," a single coastal townscape.
- Misconception: Metaphor and simile are the same device. Correct: A simile uses "like" or "as," while a metaphor "transfers a feature of one thing to the other" without those words, as the poem does throughout.
- Misconception: The storm/tiger metaphor table in the textbook is a model answer with all boxes filled. Correct: Only the Storm/tiger row is completed for the student; the remaining rows are left for the student's own answers.
Exam-style questions with model answers
Q1. What does "it" refer to in the third line of the poem, "It sits looking / over harbour and city"? [1 mark]
- "It" refers to the fog, which is pictured sitting and looking over the harbour and the city.
Q2. Name the figure of speech used throughout the poem to compare the fog to a cat, and give the definition given with the poem. [2 marks]
- The figure of speech used is metaphor.
- A metaphor compares two things by transferring a feature of one thing to the other, which is how the fog is given the feet, sitting posture, and silent movement of a cat.
Q3. Using the lines "The fog comes / on little cat feet" and "and then moves on," explain how the poet shows the fog's manner of arrival and departure. [4 marks]
- The fog's arrival is described as happening "on little cat feet," meaning it comes softly and without any sound, just like a cat walking.
- The word "little" suggests smallness and gentleness, so the arrival feels unthreatening and quiet rather than sudden or forceful.
- The departure is described simply as the fog "moves on," with no extra detail about how or where it goes.
- This brief, undramatic ending matches the quiet beginning, so the whole poem shows the fog arriving and leaving with the same silent, unhurried manner.
Q4. Find three things in the poem that tell us the fog is like a cat, even though the poet never says this directly. [3 marks]
- The fog comes "on little cat feet," given the actual feet of a cat.
- The fog "sits" and rests "on silent haunches," which the glossary explains as "sitting with knees bent," the resting posture of a cat.
- The fog "moves on" quietly afterwards, just as a cat leaves a room without being heard.
Q5. What is free verse, and why is it a suitable form for this poem about fog? [5 marks]
- Free verse is poetry that does not have an obvious rhythm or rhyme, as explained alongside the poem.
- "Fog" has six lines of varying length with no end rhyme between them, for example "feet," "looking," "city," "haunches," and "on" do not rhyme.
- There is also no fixed metre or regular number of beats in each line.
- This formlessness suits the subject, since fog itself has no fixed shape and drifts without any set pattern.
- By avoiding rhyme and metre, the poet lets the loose, quiet structure of the poem mirror the loose, quiet movement of the fog it describes, reinforcing the poem's central comparison rather than working against it.
Q6. Explain the image created by the phrase "silent haunches" and its given meaning. [2 marks]
- "Haunches" is explained in the glossary as "sitting with knees bent," the crouched resting posture of an animal such as a cat.
- Paired with "silent," the phrase pictures the fog crouched quietly over the harbour and city, poised and making no sound before it moves on.
Q7. Describe briefly what the poem says happens over the course of its six lines, in the order given in the poem. [3 marks]
- The fog first arrives quietly, "on little cat feet."
- It then sits and looks "over harbour and city," watching the scene below it "on silent haunches."
- Finally, it "moves on," leaving just as quietly as it came.
Key takeaways
- Carl Sandburg's "Fog" is a six-line poem comparing fog to a cat without ever using "like" or "as."
- The fog "comes / on little cat feet," arriving softly and silently.
- It "sits looking / over harbour and city / on silent haunches," pictured as crouched and watchful.
- The poem ends with the fog quietly departing: "and then moves on."
- The main device is metaphor, which transfers a feature of one thing, the cat, onto another, the fog.
- The poem is written in free verse, with no rhyme scheme or regular rhythm.
- "Haunches" means "sitting with knees bent," the resting posture of an animal such as a cat.
- The textbook's own example compares a storm to a tiger that "pounces over the fields" and "growls."
Test yourself
What two creatures or phenomena are being compared throughout the poem "Fog"?
The poem compares fog, a natural weather condition, to a cat, through its feet, sitting posture, and silent movement.
Does the poem use the words "like" or "as" to make its comparison?
No, the poem never uses "like" or "as"; it is built entirely through metaphor, giving the fog a cat's actions directly.
What does "on silent haunches" mean?
It means sitting with knees bent, in complete silence, describing the crouched, quiet resting posture of the fog, compared to a cat.
What two places does the fog sit over, according to the poem?
The fog sits looking over the harbour and the city, suggesting a coastal town scene.
Does the poem have a regular rhyme scheme?
No, it has no rhyme scheme and is written in free verse, poetry without an obvious rhythm or rhyme.
In the textbook's metaphor table, what animal is chosen for "Storm," and why?
A tiger is chosen for "Storm," because a storm "pounces over the fields" and "growls," just as a tiger does.
How does the poem end?
It ends with the fog quietly leaving: "and then moves on," closing the poem on the same silent note on which it began.