The Coromandel Fishers | Sarojini Naidu

About the Poet:

      Sarojini Naidu (1873-1949) was distinguished poet, renowned freedom fighters and one of the great orators of her time. She was famously known as Bharatiya Kokila (The Nightingale of India). She was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the Governor of a state in India. The three volumes of her poems The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917) occupy a place of eminence in the history of Indian English poetry. She possessed a sharp aesthetic sensibility and was an admirer of the varied colours of nature, Indian traditions and folk life. Her themes are indigenous and capture the spirit of India.

About the Poem:

The Coromandel Fishers is a lyric enriched by vivid imagery and folk culture of the Coromandel Coast of India. It depicts the relationship of fishermen with nature. Nature stands as a symbol of beauty that brings forth an optimistic view of life.

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The Coromandel Fishers

Rise, brother, 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 coconut 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 brother, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee;
Row, brother, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.