In the Night
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep,Safe till the daylight be breaking . . .We have long vigils to keep,Harvests to sow while you sleep,Fair for the hour of your waking,Ripe for your sickles to reap.
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep,Yours is the golden To-morrow,Yours are the hands that will reapDreams that we sow while you sleep,Fed with our hope and our sorrow,Rich with the tears that we weep.
Words in this poem
- daylight n.
- The light of day as opposed to the darkness of night; the light of the sun, as opposed to that of the moon or to artificial light.
- reap n.
- A bundle of grain; a handful of grain laid down by the reaper as it is cut. Wright. [Cf. AS. rip harvest. See Reap, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
In the Night 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, In the Night, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/in-the-night.html, id L27552.
Form and metre
In the Night is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAABA. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABAABA sleepA · breakingB · keepA · sleepA · wakingB · reapA
- 2 ABAABA sleepA · morrowB · reapA · sleepA · sorrowB · weepA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep, O my little ones, sleep, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Safe till the daylight be breaking . . . | 8 | ···/··/˘ |
| We have long vigils to keep, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Harvests to sow while you sleep, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Fair for the hour of your waking, | 8 | ···/··/˘ |
| Ripe for your sickles to reap. | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Sleep, O my little ones, sleep, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Yours is the golden To-morrow, | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Yours are the hands that will reap | 7 | ······· |
| Dreams that we sow while you sleep, | 7 | ······· |
| Fed with our hope and our sorrow, | 8 | ··/··//˘ |
| Rich with the tears that we weep. | 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.