Question

Summary of the poem Song of India ( SSLC Karnataka)

Answer 1

The Song of India

“What song shall I sing of you Mother?” I asked

Shall I sing

Of the Himalayas with their snow-born Peaks

Of the three seas that wash your Palm?

Shall I sing

“Of your clear dawn with pure gold streaks?”

Said the mother Imperturable calm:

Sing of the beggar and Leper

That swam my streets.

Sing of the filth and the dirt

That foul my sylvan retreats:

“What song shall I sing of you Mother?” I asked

Shall I sing

Of your rock cut temples, epics in stone,

Of your children that died to call you their own

Of the seers and prophets that hewed that straight path

For the man that pilgrims alone?”

Said the Mother in indignant words

That beat into my ears like gong,

That flew about me, a pitiful thing.

Like great white birds:

Sing of the millions that tail

Sing of the wrinkled face

Indexing ignorance.

Sing of the helpless child

Born in a bleak, dark home.

Nervous I yet would ask,

Deeming it my task:

What song shall I sing of you, my mother?

What song?

Shall I sing of the dam and the lake?

Of steel mills , the shipbuilding yard?

Of the men that work hard.

To technologies, to put you on the page

Of the Atomic Age?

Said the Mother: of these you may sing.

But sing also of the strikes, early and late.

Of iron men that come in their wake.

O class- war and its correlate.’

Querulous, I said:

Is there no song that I can sing of you,

Heart whole , alloyed?

A song bathed in the stainless blue

Unvapouring in the void?”

At that the mother rose, draped in the blue sky.

Milk-white oceans heaved round her.Their waves.

Were the entrancing and enthroning light.

On which she sat and wrote the book of the Morrow

Her forehead opened like earth’s destiny

Yielding the sun God cancelling all sorrow.

It was clear dawn like a nightmare fled the inght

An the sun-beam was as the hand that saves.

Author: Vinayaka Krishna Gokak

Answer 2

The poem Song of India by Vinayaka Krishna Gokak is in the form of a dialog between the poet and our motherland India. The poet asks Mother India what aspect of his country he should glorify through a song. He wonders if he should sing about the snow-clad Himalayas at the North or the three water bodies at the South.Sep 9, 2017