The Festival of Serpents
Shining ones awake, we seek your chosen templesIn caves and sheltering sandhills and sacred banyan roots;O lift your dreaming heads from their trance of ageless wisdom,And weave your mystic measures to the melody of flutes.
We bring you milk and maize, wild figs and golden honey,And kindle fragrant incense to hallow all the air,With fasting lips we pray, with fervent hearts we praise you,O bless our lowly offerings and hearken to our prayer.
Guard our helpless lives and guide our patient labours,And cherish our dear vision like the jewels in your crests;O spread your hooded watch for the safety of our slumbers,And soothe the troubled longings that clamour in our breasts.
Swift are ye as streams and soundless as the dewfall,Subtle as the lightning and splendid as the sun;Seers are ye and symbols of the ancient silence,Where life and death and sorrow and ecstasy are one.
Words in this poem
- ageless a.
- Without old age limits of duration; as, fountains of ageless youth.
- hallow v. t.
- To make holy; to set apart for holy or religious use; to consecrate; to treat or keep as sacred; to reverence. [OE. halowen, halwien, halgien, AS. halgian, fr. halig holy. See Holy.]
- fervent a.
- Hot; glowing; boiling; burning; as, a fervent summer. [F. fervent, L. fervens, -entis. p.pr. of fervere o the boiling hot, to boil, glow.]
- soothe v. t.
- To assent to as true. Testament of Love. [Originally, to assent to as true; OE. so to verify, AS. ges to prove the truth of, to bear witness. See Sooth, a.]
- clamour n.
- A great outcry or vociferation; loud and continued shouting or exclamation. [OF. clamour, clamur, F. clameur, fr. L. clamor, fr. clamare to cry out. See Claim.]
- soundless a.
- Not capable of being sounded or fathomed; unfathomable.
- dewfall n.
- The falling of dew; the time when dew begins to fall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Festival of Serpents 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, The Festival of Serpents, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/the-festival-of-serpents.html, id L27542.
Form and metre
The Festival of Serpents is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 temples · rootsA · wisdom · flutesA
- 2 -A-A honey · airA · you · prayerA
- 3 -A-A labours · crestsA · slumbers · breastsA
- 4 -A-A dewfall · sunA · silence · oneA
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Shining ones awake, we seek your chosen temples | 12 | /˘·˘/···/˘/˘ |
| In caves and sheltering sandhills and sacred banyan roots; | 13 | ···/˘/··/˘/˘· |
| O lift your dreaming heads from their trance of ageless wisdom, | 14 | ···/˘·····/˘/˘ |
| And weave your mystic measures to the melody of flutes. | 13 | ···/˘/˘··/˘·· |
| We bring you milk and maize, wild figs and golden honey, | 13 | ·········/˘/˘ |
| And kindle fragrant incense to hallow all the air, | 13 | ·/˘/˘/··/˘··· |
| With fasting lips we pray, with fervent hearts we praise you, | 13 | ·/˘····/˘···· |
| O bless our lowly offerings and hearken to our prayer. | 13 | ··//˘/˘·/˘·/· |
| Guard our helpless lives and guide our patient labours, | 12 | ·//˘···//˘/˘ |
| And cherish our dear vision like the jewels in your crests; | 14 | ·/˘/·/˘··/˘··· |
| O spread your hooded watch for the safety of our slumbers, | 14 | ···/˘···/˘·//˘ |
| And soothe the troubled longings that clamour in our breasts. | 13 | ···/˘/˘·/˘·/· |
| Swift are ye as streams and soundless as the dewfall, | 12 | ······/˘··/˘ |
| Subtle as the lightning and splendid as the sun; | 12 | /˘··/˘·/˘··· |
| Seers are ye and symbols of the ancient silence, | 12 | ····/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Where life and death and sorrow and ecstasy are one. | 12 | ·····/˘·/˘·· |
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.