To Love
O Love! of all the riches that are mine,What gift have I withheld before thy shrine?
What tender ecstasy of prayer and praiseOr lyric flower of my impassioned days?
What poignant dream have I denied to theeOf secret hope, desire and memory;
Or intimate anguish of sad years, long dead,Old griefs unstaunched, old fears uncomforted?
What radiant prophecies that thrill and throngThe unborn years with swift delight of song?
O Love! of all the treasures that I own,What gift have I withheld before thy throne?
Words in this poem
- impassioned p. p.
- Actuated or characterized by passion or zeal; showing warmth of feeling; ardent; animated; excited; as, an impassioned orator or discourse.
- poignant a.
- Pricking; piercing; sharp; pungent. [F., p. pr. of poindre to sting, fr. L. pungere to prick, sting. See Pungent.]
- unborn a.
- Not born; no yet brought into life; being still to appear; future.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To Love 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, To Love, in The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death & the Spring (1912), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-bird-of-time/to-love.html, id L27526.
Form and metre
To Love is 12 lines in 6 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AA mineA · shrineA
- 2 AA praiseA · daysA
- 5 AA throngA · songA
- 6 AA ownA · throneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O Love! of all the riches that are mine, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| What gift have I withheld before thy shrine? | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| What tender ecstasy of prayer and praise | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘···· |
| Or lyric flower of my impassioned days? | 10 | ·/˘/··˘/˘· |
| What poignant dream have I denied to thee | 10 | ·/˘···˘/·· |
| Of secret hope, desire and memory; | 11 | ·/˘·˘/˘·/˘˘ |
| Or intimate anguish of sad years, long dead, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Old griefs unstaunched, old fears uncomforted? | 10 | ·········· |
| What radiant prophecies that thrill and throng | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘···· |
| The unborn years with swift delight of song? | 10 | ·//···˘/·· |
| O Love! of all the treasures that I own, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| What gift have I withheld before thy throne? | 10 | ····˘/···· |
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.