The Coromandel Fishers

Sarojini Naidu


About Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu (1879 - 1949) was also known as 'The Nightingale of India'. She was an Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu served as the first governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949 and was also the first woman to become the governor of an Indian state. Some of her other famous poems are The Bazaars of Hyderabad and The Wandering Singers.

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call,
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all.
What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives.

Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove,
And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love;
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee;
Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.

Available Answers

  1. 1.

    Is it a calm morning? How do you know?

  2. 2.

    The wind and the dawn are personified - that is, they have been given the qualities of people. What are they personified as?

  3. 3.

    Do you think that the fisherman are eager to get into their catamarans and go out to sea?

  4. 4.

    What does the poem mean by hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call?

  5. 5.

    What are the things that the fisherman enjoy on land?

  6. 6.

    Do you think the fisherman prefer being at sea to being on shore? Use examples from the poem to support your answer.

2 more answer(s) available.

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