Autumn Song
Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow,The sunset hangs on a cloud;A golden storm of glittering sheaves,Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is callingTo my heart in the voice of the wind:My heart is weary and sad and alone,For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,And why should I stay behind?
About this text
Autumn Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Golden Threshold, with an introduction by Arthur Symons (Hyderabad, 1905; London, John Lane, 1905), Project Gutenberg ebook #680; 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, Autumn Song, in The Golden Threshold (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #680, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-golden-threshold/autumn-song.html, id L27489.
Form and metre
Autumn Song is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 -ABBA sorrow · cloudA · sheavesB · leavesB · cloudA
- 2 -A--A calling · windA · alone · gone · behindA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Like a joy on the heart of a sorrow, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| The sunset hangs on a cloud; | 7 | ·/····· |
| A golden storm of glittering sheaves, | 9 | ·/˘··/˘˘· |
| Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves, | 9 | ·····/˘˘· |
| The wild wind blows in a cloud. | 7 | ······· |
| Hark to a voice that is calling | 8 | ······/˘ |
| To my heart in the voice of the wind: | 9 | ········· |
| My heart is weary and sad and alone, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And why should I stay behind? | 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.