Champak Blossoms
Amber petals, ivory petals,Petals of carven jade,Charming with your ambrosial sweetnessForest and field and glade,Foredoomed in your hour of transient gloryTo shrivel and shrink and fade!
Tho' mango blossoms have long since vanished,And orange blossoms be shed,They live anew in the luscious harvestsOf ripening yellow and red;But you, when your delicate bloom is over,Will reckon amongst the dead.
Only to girdle a girl's dark tressesYour fragrant hearts are uncurled:Only to garland the vernal breezesYour fragile stars are unfurled.You make no boast in your purposeless beautyTo serve or profit the world.
Yet, 'tis of you thro' the moonlit agesThat maidens and minstrels sing,And lay your buds on the great god's altar,O radiant blossoms that flingYour rich, voluptuous, magical perfumeTo ravish the winds of spring.
Words in this poem
- carven a.
- Wrought by carving; ornamented by carvings; carved.
- ambrosial a.
- Consisting of, or partaking of the nature of, ambrosia; delighting the taste or smell; delicious.
- glade n.
- An open passage through a wood; a grassy open or cleared space in a forest. [Prob. of Scand. origin, and akin to glad, a.; cf. also W. golead, goleuad, a lighting, illumination, fr. goleu light, clear, bright, goleu fwlch glade, lit., a ]
- luscious a.
- Sweet; delicious; very grateful to the taste; toothsome; excessively sweet or rich. [Prob. for lustious, fr. lusty, or perh. a corruption of luxurious. Cf. Lush, Lusty.]
- amongst prep.
- Mixed or mingled; surrounded by. [OE. amongist, amonges, amonge, among, AS. onmang, ongemang, gemang, in a crowd or mixture. For the ending -st see Amidst. See Mingle.]
- purposeless a.
- Having no purpose or result; objectless. Bp. Hall.
- moonlit a.
- Illumined by the moon.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Champak Blossoms is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (London: William Heinemann; New York: John Lane Company, 1912), Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sarojini Naidu, Champak Blossoms, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/champak-blossoms.html, id L27535.
Form and metre
Champak Blossoms is 24 lines in 4 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A-A petals · jadeA · sweetness · gladeA · glory · fadeA
- 2 -A-A-A vanished · shedA · harvests · redA · over · deadA
- 3 -A-A-A tresses · uncurledA · breezes · unfurledA · beauty · worldA
- 4 -A-A-A ages · singA · altar · flingA · perfume · springA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Amber petals, ivory petals, | 9 | /˘/˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Petals of carven jade, | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Charming with your ambrosial sweetness | 9 | /˘··˘/˘/˘ |
| Forest and field and glade, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Foredoomed in your hour of transient glory | 11 | ·····/·/˘/˘ |
| To shrivel and shrink and fade! | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Tho' mango blossoms have long since vanished, | 10 | ·/˘/˘···/˘ |
| And orange blossoms be shed, | 7 | ·/˘/˘·· |
| They live anew in the luscious harvests | 10 | ··˘/··/˘/˘ |
| Of ripening yellow and red; | 8 | ·/˘˘/˘·· |
| But you, when your delicate bloom is over, | 10 | ····/˘˘··· |
| Will reckon amongst the dead. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Only to girdle a girl's dark tresses | 10 | /˘·/˘···/˘ |
| Your fragrant hearts are uncurled: | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Only to garland the vernal breezes | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘/˘ |
| Your fragile stars are unfurled. | 7 | ·/˘··˘/ |
| You make no boast in your purposeless beauty | 11 | ······/˘˘/˘ |
| To serve or profit the world. | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Yet, 'tis of you thro' the moonlit ages | 10 | ······/·/˘ |
| That maidens and minstrels sing, | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| And lay your buds on the great god's altar, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| O radiant blossoms that fling | 8 | ·/˘˘/˘·· |
| Your rich, voluptuous, magical perfume | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘˘˘/ |
| To ravish the winds of spring. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.