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In Sarojini Naidu's short poem "In Praise of Henna", both stanzas start with the same two lines:
A kokila called from a henna-spray:
Lira! liree! Lira! liree!
I presume that "kokila" here means this bird of the cuckoo family, but why would such a bird, or indeed any bird, be found in a henna-sp...1
The poem "Leili" by Sarojini Naidu goes like this:
The serpents are asleep among the poppies,
The fireflies light the soundless panther's way
To tangled paths where shy gazelles are straying,
And parrot-plumes outshine the dying day.
O soft! the lotus-buds upon the stream
Are stirring like sweet...
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Sarojini Naidu's To India uses a nurturing mother as a metaphor for the country throughout the poem. The first few lines run so:
O young through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom,
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres,
Beget new glories from thine ag...
From The Riverside Villas Murder by Kingsley Amis:
‘Good.’ The colonel worked his bell-push. ‘Thank you for coming, Peter.'
‘Oh no, sir, thank you for a sawney tea. And the music.’
Kingsley Amis (1973). The Riverside Villas Murder, p. 161. London: Cape.
What is a “sawney tea”? The OED says that...
We know that A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens sets in the Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge became a good man in that day.
Are there other adaptations of this novel which set in another holiday (Christian or non-Christian)?
