Medley: A Kashmeri Song
The poppy grows on the roof-top,The iris flowers on the grave;Hope in the heart of a lover,And fear in the heart of a slave.
The opal lies in the river,The pearl in the ocean's breast;Doubt in a grieving bosom,And faith in a heart at rest.
Fireflies dance in the moon-light,Peach-leaves dance in the wind;Dreams and delicate fanciesDance thro' a poet's mind.
Sweetness dwells in the beehive,And lives in a maiden's breath;Joy in the eyes of childrenAnd peace in the hands of Death.
Words in this poem
- beehive n.
- A hive for a swarm of bees. Also used figuratively.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Medley: A Kashmeri Song 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, Medley: A Kashmeri Song, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/medley-a-kashmeri-song.html, id L27559.
Form and metre
Medley: A Kashmeri Song is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 top · graveA · lover · slaveA
- 2 -A-A river · breastA · bosom · restA
- 3 -A-A light · windA · fancies · mindA
- 4 -A-A beehive · breathA · children · deathA
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The poppy grows on the roof-top, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The iris flowers on the grave; | 7 | ·/˘/··· |
| Hope in the heart of a lover, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| And fear in the heart of a slave. | 8 | ········ |
| The opal lies in the river, | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| The pearl in the ocean's breast; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Doubt in a grieving bosom, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| And faith in a heart at rest. | 7 | ······· |
| Fireflies dance in the moon-light, | 8 | /˘······ |
| Peach-leaves dance in the wind; | 6 | ······ |
| Dreams and delicate fancies | 7 | ··/˘˘/˘ |
| Dance thro' a poet's mind. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Sweetness dwells in the beehive, | 7 | /˘···/· |
| And lives in a maiden's breath; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Joy in the eyes of children | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And peace in the hands of Death. | 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.