Wandering Singers
Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,Through echoing forest and echoing street,With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,The laughter and beauty of women long dead;The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.
Words in this poem
- lustre n.
- A period of five years; a lustrum. [L. lustrum: cf. F. lustre.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Wandering Singers 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, Wandering Singers, in The Golden Threshold (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #680, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/naidu-golden-threshold/wandering-singers.html, id L27476.
Form and metre
Wandering Singers is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in anapaestic tetrameter.
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 feetA · streetA · roamB · homeB
- 2 AABB shedA · deadA · kingsB · thingsB
- 3 AABB sowA · goA · waitB · fateB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet, | 11 | ·······//˘· |
| Through echoing forest and echoing street, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·/˘˘· |
| With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam, | 10 | ···/·//˘·· |
| All men are our kindred, the world is our home. | 11 | ···//˘···/· |
| Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed, | 11 | /···/˘·/˘·· |
| The laughter and beauty of women long dead; | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| And happy and simple and sorrowful things. | 10 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘· |
| What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow? | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go. | 11 | ····//˘/··· |
| No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait: | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate. | 11 | ·········/· |
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.