Spring
Young leaves grow green on the banyan twigs,And red on the peepul tree,The honey-birds pipe to the budding figs,And honey-blooms call the bee.
Poppies squander their fragile goldIn the silvery aloe-brake,Coral and ivory lilies unfoldTheir delicate lives on the lake.
Kingfishers ruffle the feathery sedge,And all the vivid air thrillsWith butterfly-wings in the wild-rose hedge,And the luminous blue of the hills.
Kamala tinkles a lingering footIn the grove where temple-bells ring,And Krishna plays on his bamboo fluteAn idyl of love and spring.
Words in this poem
- kamala n.
- The red dusty hairs of the capsules of an East Indian tree (Mallotus Philippinensis) used for dyeing silk. It is violently emetic, and is used in the treatment of tapeworm.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Spring 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, Spring, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/spring.html, id L27527.
Form and metre
Spring is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is anapaestic common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in anapaestic common measure.
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 ABAB twigsA · treeB · figsA · beeB
- 2 ABAB goldA · brakeB · unfoldA · lakeB
- 3 ABAB sedgeA · thrillsB · hedgeA · hillsB
- 4 ABAB footA · ringB · fluteA · springB
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 anapaestic common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Young leaves grow green on the banyan twigs, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And red on the peepul tree, | 7 | ······· |
| The honey-birds pipe to the budding figs, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| And honey-blooms call the bee. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Poppies squander their fragile gold | 8 | /˘/˘·/˘· |
| In the silvery aloe-brake, | 8 | ··/˘˘/·· |
| Coral and ivory lilies unfold | 10 | /˘·/˘˘/˘˘/ |
| Their delicate lives on the lake. | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Kingfishers ruffle the feathery sedge, | 10 | /·˘/˘·/˘˘· |
| And all the vivid air thrills | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| With butterfly-wings in the wild-rose hedge, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And the luminous blue of the hills. | 9 | ··/˘˘···· |
| Kamala tinkles a lingering foot | 10 | ˘/˘/˘·/˘˘· |
| In the grove where temple-bells ring, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| And Krishna plays on his bamboo flute | 9 | ·/˘···˘/· |
| An idyl of love and 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.