Sarojini Naidu
The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, including 'The Gift of India' (first read in public in 1915). IN the radiant and far-off yesterdays of our history it was the sacred duty of Indian womanhood to kindle and sustain the hearth-fires, the beacon-fires, and the altar-fires of the nation. The Indian woman of to-day is once more awake and profoundly alive to her splendid destiny as the guardian and interpreter of the Triune Vision of national life-the Vision of Love, the Vision of Faith, the Vision of Patriotism. Her renascent consciousness is everywhere striving for earnest expression in song or speech, service or self-sacrifice, that shall prove an offering not unworthy of the Great Mother in the eyes of the world that honor her. Poignantly aware of the poverty of my gift, I still venture to make my offering with joined palms up- lifted in a Salutation of Song.
