2.2 Indian Wear (Appreciation)
About the poem/poet and the title: ‘Indian Weavers’ is by the renowned poet, Sarojini Naidu. The poem was taken from the poet’s first volume, ' The Golden Threshold’, published in 1905. It consists of three stanzas, or quatrains, with two rhyming couplets each. This poem is a metaphor for the three stages of human life - birth, youth and death. The poet depicts Indian weavers, who weave tirelessly at different times, while simultaneously describing the three stages of human life, from birth to death, just as the weavers weave from dawn tonight. The poet chooses three different time settings - the weavers weave the new-born baby’s garments in the early morning, the queen’s marriage-veils in the evening and the dead man’s shroud at midnight.
The theme: The poem's central theme is the parallelism that the poet beautifully draws between the three parts of the weaver’s workday and the three stages of human life. The poem has been written in iambic tetrameter and its three stanzas follow the rhyme scheme of ‘aabb’, ‘ccdd’ and ‘eeff’ respectively.
Poetic style: The style used in the poem is simple and lucid, with each stanza beginning with a question to evoke the reader’s interest.
The language/poetic devices used in the poem: The poetic devices Alliteration, Consonance, Inversion, Metaphor, Repetition and simile have been employed to enhance the text’s poetic appeal. The use of Simile in ‘blue as the wing of a halcyon wild’, Metaphor in ‘break of day’ to compare it to ‘childhood’, Alliteration in repetitive consonant sounds of ‘we’ throughout the stanzas or ‘p’ in ‘purple peacock’, and repetition of the words ‘weavers’, weaving’ and ‘weave’ across the poem are the examples of these poetic devices.
Special features: The poet has used vivid imagery in correlating the parts of the day to the stages of life. Almost every line of the poem contains imagery, which paints a picture in the readers’ minds about the ‘weavers weaving’, ‘blue-colored robe on a new-born baby’, ‘a queen wearing purple and green coloured marriage-veil’ and a ‘dead body covered with a white shroud’. The major use of symbolism in the poem is that the ‘threads’ of a person’s life are woven by ‘destiny’ or ‘Fates’, which is represented by the ‘weavers’ in this poem. It is the Fates who decide the time of birth, the length of youth and the time of death of a person. Thus, the contextual meaning of the poem may be the weavers weaving garments and a shroud for various occasions, but symbolically the poem represents the cycle of life and death with the threads of each stage being woven by the Fates.
Message, values, morals in the poem: The message being conveyed by the poem is that of the perpetual motion of life, where each stage, characterized by its unique emotions, lasts for a while before the next one comes along to take its place. I find this poem a good read as it is a short poem that is packed with imagery.
Your opinion about the poem: I like the poem for the colour scheme that the poet has chosen for the garments woven by the weaver according to the life-stage of the intended wearer.
