Indian Weavers
Weavers, weaving at break of day,Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Weavers, weaving at fall of night,Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.
Weavers, weaving solemn and still,What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .White as a feather and white as a cloud,We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.
About this text
Indian Weavers 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, Indian Weavers, in The Golden Threshold (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #680, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-golden-threshold/indian-weavers.html, id L27477.
Form and metre
Indian Weavers is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See 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 AABB dayA · gayA · wildB · childB
- 2 AABB nightA · brightA · greenB · queenB
- 3 AABB stillA · chillA · cloudB · shroudB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Weavers, weaving at break of day, | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . . | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, | 10 | ······/˘˘· |
| We weave the robes of a new-born child. | 9 | ········· |
| Weavers, weaving at fall of night, | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green, | 11 | ·····/·/˘·· |
| We weave the marriage-veils of a queen. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Weavers, weaving solemn and still, | 8 | /˘/˘/˘·· |
| What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . . | 9 | ······/·· |
| White as a feather and white as a cloud, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| We weave a dead man's funeral shroud. | 9 | ·····/˘˘· |
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.