Question

Appreciation:

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day, Why do you weave a garment so gay?... Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, We weave the robes of a new-born child. Weavers, weaving at fall of night, Why do you weave a garment so bright?... Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green, We weave the marriage-veils of a queen. Weavers, weaving solemn and still, What do you weave in the moonlight chill?... White as a feather and white as a cloud, We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

Read the given extract and write the appreciation of the given poem based on the following aspects.

• About the poem, significance of the title.
• Form of the poem, theme and its significance.
• Poetic style, language features, poetic devices.
• Inspirational message, values, morals reflected.
• Your opinion and critical evaluation of the poem.

Answer 1

‘Indian Weavers’ is a poem by the renowned poet, Sarojini Naidu. The poem has been taken from the poet’s first volume poetry ‘The Golden Threshold’, published in 1905. The poem consists of 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 aptly used in the title, 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 to night. 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 central theme of the poem 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. The poetic devices Alliteration, Consonance, Inversion, Metaphor, Repetition and Simile have been employed to enhance the text’s poetic appeal. The poet has used vivid imagery in correlating the parts of day to the stages of life. Almost each line of the poem contains imagery, which paints a picture in the readers’ minds. There is major use of symbolism in the poem. 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. The message being conveyed by the poem is that of the perpetual motion of life, where each stage, characterised 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 short poem which is packed with imagery. I like the poem for the colour-scheme that the poet has chosen for the garments woven by the weaver.