by Sarojini Naidu (1879 - 1949)
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies...
Language: English
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 sons 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 blue of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.
About the headline (FAQ)
Confirmed with Sarojini Naidu, The Golden Threshold, London, William Heinemann, 1905, pages 31-32. Note: several later anthologies seem to have changed "sons of the sea" (stanza 1, last line) to "kings of the sea" and "blue of the verge" (final stanza, last full line) to "edge of the verge"). This can be seen in Heights and Highways, Macmillan, 1929 and The Boy's Book of Verse: An Anthology, Lippincott, 1951. We will try to add earlier publications when we encounter them.
Authorship:
- by Sarojini Naidu (1879 - 1949), "The Coromandel Fishers", appears in The Golden Threshold, in 1. Folk Songs [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 - 1912), "Sons of the sea", 1909-1910, published 1910 [ voice and piano or orchestra ] [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2022-01-07
Line count: 24
Word count: 189