Mrs. Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949), born as Sarojini Chattopadhyay, known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India, was an Indian Independence Freedom Fighter, orator and poet. She was born on 13th February 1879. And so users in India were greeted on 13th February 2014 with a doodle marking her 135th birthday on the Google homepage.
In her political life she went on to be the first Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to become the Governor of State of Uttar Pradesh.
Being a prolific poet, in 1905, the first volume of her collection of poems, The Golden Threshold was published. Then another collection “The Bird of Time” and “The Broken Wing” were published in 1912 and 1917 respectively, followed by several other poems and prose. The “Broken Wing: Songs of Life and Death and the Spring” reminds one of her brilliant poem “The Imam Bara”.
The Imam Bara
(Of Lucknow)
Out of the somber shadows,
Over the sunlit grass,
Slow in a sad procession
The shadowy pageants pass
Mournful, majestic, and solemn,
Stricken and pail and dumb,
Crowned in their peerless anguish
The sacred martyrs come.
Hark, from the brooding silence
Breaks the wild cry of pain
Wrung from the heart of the ages
Ali! Hassan! Hussain!
Come from this tomb of shadows,
Come from this tragic shrine
That throbs with the deathless sorrow
Of a long-dead martyr line.
Love! Let the living sunlight
Kindle your splendid eyes
Ablaze with the steadfast triumph
Of the spirit that never dies.
So may the hope of new ages
Comfort the mystic pain
That cries from the ancient silence
Ali! Hassan! Hussain!
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