‘Song of a Dream’, written by Sarojini Naidu, is a Romantic lyric. The poem describes a dream that expresses the speaker’s wish for an ideal world of Truth, Love and Peace.
The poem has two stanzas- the first one describes a vision and the second stanza narrates what the speaker has done there. In a dream of night, the speaker stood alone in a magical wood. Visions sprang up like poppy. In that magical land, spirits of Truth were the singing birds. The spirits of Love were the shining stars and the spirits of Peace were the flowing streams. The speaker felt the stars- the spirits of Love- gather around her delicate youth. She heard the song of Truth. She quenched her thirst from the streams of Peace
The most obvious theme of the poem is the dream of an ideal society where truth, love and peace prevail. It can be the speaker’s concept of independent India. The capitalization of the words – Truth, Love and Peace- suggests sublimation of these values. The dream land is without anything ‘wild’ about it.
The poem presents its theme using auditory, visual and compound images. Truth is heard as the songs of birds, love is seen and felt as the light of stars and peace is presented in the image of a stream which combines three sensations- it seen, heard and tasted.
The poem has two septets each rhyming ‘aabbccd’. It resembles sonnet in number of lines and its romantic content. However, its stanza pattern and rhyme scheme are not those of regular English sonnets
In a nutshell, Sarojini Naidu’s poem shares the legacy of Romantic poetry and it expresses a dream of an ideal and perfect society of truth, love and peace.
