SONG OF A DREAM - APPRECIATION

Sarojini Naidu wrote an incredible poem called “Song of a Dream.” It articulates the poet’s longing to live in heaven free of all evils and depravity. She specifies the preferred destination as the “magical wood in the land of sleep,” and she expresses her longing in the guise of a dream. The conceptual concepts of truth, love, and peace are vividly seen in her imaginative universe.

Sarojini Naidu, The Nightingale of India, sings about one of her fantasies of being solitary on a mystical wood in the poem. Her spirit was immersed in deep illusions that were the result of her imagination, she adds.

Then she sings about a one-of-a-kind encounter with the spirits of truth she sang about, as well as the spirits of luminous love and serenity that flow like heavenly currents. In this poem, “Truth” is illustrated by singing birds, “Love” by dazzling stars, and “Peace” is portrayed through flowing streams in the poet’s dream.

 

She continues, “I felt the stars of the spirits of love.” She also hears the fabulous music of the spirits of truth, as one might foresee in such a magnificent environment. Sarojini Naidu also speaks of a deep craving for the truth that can only be gratified by sipping from the streams of tranquillity.

We can observe that the poet employs her emotions to understand abstract thoughts like love, honesty, and harmony. The poem includes both aural and visual images. Throughout the poem, Naidu uses powerful sensory imagery.

The visual portrayals include images springing like poppies, truth as birds, love as stars, and peace as streams. The streams flowing and stars gleaming which gather around the poet are also perfect visual images. Besides, the song of the bird can be assessed as an auditory image and the smell of poppies as an olfactory image.

 The poet instills excellent rhythmic quality in the poem by maintaining a smooth cadence and a rhyming scheme. (‘aa-bb-cc’, stood-wood, sprang-sang, glowed-flowed). The phrases ‘gather and gleam’, and ‘lone in the light give the alliterative effect of repeated consonant sounds. To contribute to the figurative meaning of the poem, the poet has cleverly used a simile in the third sentence (visions that poppy-like sprang) and metaphors when talking about ‘spirits of truth, stars of love and streams of peace. The poetic device of personification in which human qualities are given to inanimate (without life) objects can be seen in the line ‘stars gathering around my delicate youth’ as stars are lifeless and cannot move. We also see that in peace which is depicted as spirit.

The message that the poet wants to communicate is about the peaceful and mellifluous co-existence of all human beings in the world by creating a heaven-like perfect place. All the cardinal markers of truth, love, and peace must fill the exterior of the earth for this. 

The poem is remarkably relevant in today’s context where religious intolerance, sub-nationalism, honor killing, and horrors against women and children continue at an alarming rate. We can conclude that the poet exhorts us to initiate heaven-like a flawless place where everyone lives harmoniously as a single but great human family.

FEBA SUSAN CHERIAN.