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On Derozio’s My Country! Is thy day of glory past?

To India My Native Land" is a song of love and deep emotion from Henry Louis Vivian
Derozio to his "fallen country," India. The poem was published before Derozio's untimely death
at the age of twenty-two from cholera in 1831.

The abab abcc dede ff rhyme scheme employed by Derozio is most clearly identifiable as a variation
of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti rhyme scheme. In Derozio's poem there is Spenserian
concatenation (rhyme and meaning linkage) at the cc couplet in the second quatrain. It is at this
couplet that the poetic speaker hits the crescendo of his song and reveals the emotional
motivation behind the story he tells and behind the resolution he will promise.

In an apostrophe addressing India, the poetic persona, who is tightly associated with Derozio
himself, recounts India's "days of glory past" when glory, reverence, and deity were like a
"beauteous halo circled round thy brow." These four short lines of iambic pentameter paint a
vivid picture of the India that existed before British colonization. They also reveal the deep
emotional ties the persona has to the memory of the true India, the free India, the India that
commanded respect from other civilizations.

The address to India continues in the second quatrain, but line 5 turns the topic from glory to
misery. India's fallen estate under colonization is lamented and compared to a subdued eagle
whose wings are chained, which renders the bird powerless as it grovels "in the lowly dust." In
the cc couplet of the quatrain, the speaker exclaims over the loss of minstrel songs of victory
since all that is left is India's story of "misery!" This is the high point of the poem and of the
speaker's story of India's glory and fall. India's misery is the speaker's motivation and the reason
for his forthcoming promise.

Line 9 introduces a new tone to the third quatrain with "Well—let me dive." In a somber tone,
the persona promises to reach into the past days of glory to salvage some memory of India's
former position as a powerful civilization. This promise is couched in a metaphor of diving into
the ocean of time and ages past where a "few small fragments" of recollected deeds and
accomplishments might be salvaged for a "human eye" to see. This promise is analogous of
Shakespearean promises to make the beloved immortal through the lines of his love sonnets.

The resolution of the sonnet is unfolded in the ending couplet. The speaker declares that his
reward for revealing a fraction of India's true past will be the "kind wish" that even one person
may send India's way. When Derozio composed this work, India was still imprisoned by
colonialism as an eagle is "imprisoned" by chained pinion feathers.

Lamenting the loss of the glorious past of India which was full of riches, both spiritual and
material, the poet narrates how the country has come to be tied down by the foreign powers.
The poet determines to fetch such long lost memorable moments of Indian glory which have
hitherto been hidden from the world’s eyes only to reinstate once more the glory of India. ‘In thy
days of glory past’ refers to the bygone age of Indian supremacy as a civilization rich in all
resources. This could refer to the period starting from the Harrapan age down to the great
Mughal period. ‘Halo’ refers to the mythical ring of light that surrounds angels’ heads. It refers to
the angelic quality of India. In ‘eagle pinion’ India has been compared with an eagle which has
been chained by the British power. ‘Lowly dust’ refers to the pitiful condition of the country post
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its domination by Britain. ‘Minstrel’ refers to a singer. Here it could mean the national poets/
historians who write poem histories of a country, often glorifying it. ‘Guerdon’ signifies reward
of labour. Here the poet wants to receive the reward of ‘one kind wish’ of his beloved country
for his labour to salvage some ‘wrecks sublime’ which means the patches of Indian glory stuck in
time and forgotten history which is itself signified by the phrase ‘depths of time’.

The theme of the poem is pretty simple and straight forward. It deals with the frustration at the
contemporary condition of the country which has been rendered weak and insulted at the hands
of the foreign onslaught. It is a poignant lament. It a true cry from the heart. The poem also
seems to suggest the desire of the poet to bring out some long lost glorified past of the country.

The patriotic tone of the poem is but obvious. It’s sad but with a desire to do something in order
to improve the condition. It is indeed a very simple sonnet with the clear cut divisions between
the octet and sestet. The octet deals with the fallen condition of the native land as opposed to its
erstwhile greatness. A contrast has been instituted between Derozio’s India and the India of the
bygone age. In the sestet which concludes with a couplet a resurgence in emotion happens which
spurs the poet to try to salvage a portion of the lost glory by digging into the past of the nation
and bring back some glorious memento to show the world and its own people so that some
amount of the past self respect is restored. As it happens with great poems or any piece of great
literature that the best of styles lies in the stylelessness, the same comes true for this poem. The
best of art conceals art. The poem does not yield anything to a sophisticated stylistic analysis. In
its simplicity it makes one of the most potent style statements i.e. – ‘look in to thy heart and
write’ (the poetic creed of Sir Philip Sydney as expressed in his poem, Loving in Truth.) The style
is commensurate with the theme and execution of the poem. As mentioned already the sonnet is
a heartfelt cry at the pitiable condition of India and thus allows no room for pretensions. In fact
the poem being a sonnet aptly conveys the sharp and shrill response of pain in the poet’s heart.

Now, we can look a little deeper into the text in order to find something which the casual
chauvinistic attitude might hold back from our view. If we expose the lines of the poem specially
the sestet to a deconstructive reading then we will find that the meaning of the text takes a very
regressive view. This regressive view of the poem can form a parallel with the kind of
dependence on glorification of history of India which was taken up by the Hindu nationalists like
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai etc. These nationalists relied on the so called glory of
India’s past to generate the much needed morale boost for the Indians who had lost their self
respect under the humiliating rule of the English. In order to break free from the hegemony of
the English the Indian nationalists turned to a ‘brave old world’ as a counter discourse to the
hegemonic discourse of the English that portrayed us as effeminate and weak. Now if we take up
the lines – “Well let me dive into the depths of time, /And bring from out the ages that have
rolled/A few small fragments of those wrecks sublime.” we find that Derozio is also indulging in
the rhetoric of regression to counter the hegemonic propaganda of the English. This while
bringing back the confidence of the native people in their own culture and history has its own
danger of making us stay in our glorified past and neglect both our present and future. Thus
instead of looking ahead (the poet doesn’t do that in any line of the poem) he constantly harps
back continuously to the lost past. Again more disturbing is the fact that Derozio claims that the
‘wrecks sublime’ which he will bring back from the past will no more be seen by the world. This
signifies that India will never reach the glory once more. The poet seems to fix India in a
stereotype of fallenness. Thus is in his eulogy he actually presents a stagnating picture of the
country he loves. The English have forever called us a country bound in its past. In fact many
pro colonial writers and travelers have described India as a land of timelessness.
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In the light of the preceding argument we find the images highly ambivalent. The halo talked
about in the second line signifies the angelic appearance of the motherland. From a patriarchal
chauvinistic approach we find the image quite in line with the then description of the motherland
as an angel which is in contrast even with the fighter image of the country which the freedom
fighters like Rani Lakshmibai portrayed and which the radical freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh,
Chandrashekhar Azad wanted to uphold. With the image of the deity with the halo is again a
mythical image which reminds us of the discussion made above. Today we Indians would like to
portray our country as a super power not with a halo on her head but with the weapons of
economic, social and political change and upgradation. The image of the eagle being chained is
also significant on two levels, first, that India has been compared with a bird of prey which has
lost its strength and secondly, that the wild bird has been tamed by the ‘better’ civilization. In
fact, Rudyard Kipling had mentioned that it was the burden of the white men to ‘civilize’ the
third world countries (erstwhile colonies). As Benita Perry finds out that Edward Said has not
mentioned the resistance that the colonies offered to the colonial onslaught in his book
Orientalism, in the image of the grovelling eagle, the poet forgets to mention the constant
struggle of the eagle to break free from the bounds. Derozio perhaps doesn’t appreciate the
numerous poems, pamphlets and other literature that tries to awake the revolutionary
consciousness of the Indian mass and thus the image of the minstrel, who has nothing to sing of
India but only the laments of misery. The images of India as nothing but sublime wrecks and a
land lost in the depths of time and a place where ages have rolled by are significant of the
stereotypical image of India.

As pointed out earlier, the simplicity of the poem doesn’t allow for too much rhetorical
ornamentation yet the personification of India, the apostrophe in the beginning of the poem, the
vision of India as a deity, the interrogation in the fourth line, the alliteration in the 7th, the
metaphors of history, time and glory have their own unique place in the poem. They embellish
the content as well as adding to the formal shine of the lyric.

Thus we find that the poem though short in length just like the life of the poet is full of
significances which still hold good in our contemporary world where India is still pinioned if not
by foreign forces but with our internal squabbles of petty politics, religion, casteism and poverty.

Notes:

in thy days of glory past: in the past when India was full of glory
In the past, India had a rich cultural, spiritual and literary attribute: she was full of glory and was
admired and reverred all over the world. India was regarded highly by all but now, because of her
subjugation to the British imperial intentions, she has lost all her glory and grandeur.
* a beauteous halo
Halo: a circle of light surrounding the head of a holy person in a painting or a sculpture.
The phrase underscores the divine and stellar status that India enjoyed in the past. She was
worshipped as a deity, as a goddess.
º The poet resorts to the figure of speech Metaphor to compare India to a deity.
Metaphor is a figure of speech in which two things are compared omitting like or as.
E The car flew down the highway. My love is a red, red rose.
Simile is a figure of speech in which two things are compared using like or as.
E The car flew like a bird down the highway. My love is like a red, red rose.

The poet then exclaims rhetorically where the glory and reverence that India enjoyed in the past
have vanished.
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Rhetorical Question is a question in which the answer is implied in the question itself.
E Can we forget those happy days?
Such a poetic technique is used by the poet to involve the readers in the drift of the poem.

* Thy eagle pinion is chained at last

Eagle is a royal bird; pinion is its wings.
The poet metaphorically compares India at present to an eagle, a regal bird, which is chained
and, hence, cannot fly. The contrast of India at present to the India in the past is obvious. In the
past, India was like an eagle regally soaring high up in the sky. But, at present, she has been
demeaned to the condition of a chained eagle unable to fly but can only crawl piteously on the
lowly rubble.
* grovelling in the lowly dust art thou
grovelling = crawling
humble = cheap, worthless, mean
dust = earth
The use of the word dust is significant in that it refers to a saying in the Bible “Thou art dust;
thou returnst to dust”.
Dust is an image of death. According to the Christian belief, God created man out of clay (dust) and
when, after his death, he is buried, he becomes one with the earth (dust).
* Thy minstrels hath no wreath to weave for thee
Minstrels are poet-singers.
Wreath is a floral decoration placed over man’s dead body to show respect and regard to the
dead soul. Wreath is an image of death.
The poet employs these images of death- dust and wreath- to communicate to the readers the
worthless and meaningless as well as the demoralised condition of India under the British
dominance.
The writing of a poem is compared, using a concealed metaphor, to the weaving of a wreath. In
the past, the poets used to compose and sing songs of praise glorifying the greatness of India.
Now, the poets can no more write these eulogies since India is in a miserable state having lost all
its glory and divine status of the past.
* Save the sad story of thy misery
The word Save is used here, not in its original meaning rescue, but to mean except/but.
The poets cannot glorify India in their poems but they can only write poems on the tragic tale of
India’s present misery under the British colonialism.
In the octet of the sonnet, Derozio laments the loss of glory and reverence of his beloved
country India. The sorrowful strain of the poem carries the poet’s deep distress at India’s misery.
* Well
The poet comes to a decision. He offers his selfless labours to his prized country and attempts to
salvage her from the abject abyss of ruination now.
The poet’s intention is to comprehensively explore (dive into) the past history of India (depths of
time) and to write poems (bring out) on a few glorious and esteemed epochs (a few small fragments)
from the chronicles of Indian history.
By this means, Derozio hopes to introduce to the present and future generations the dignified
status and magnificent grandeur that his country once enjoyed. By making the men and women
of now and coming days aware of the bygone grandeur and greatness of India, Derozio expects
to regain and reestablish India’s glory and reverence. His poems of glory, dedicated to his dearest
motherland, will inspire the young Indians to break the shackles of slavery under the British
supremacy.
* wreck sublime
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Though India is at present in a wrecked and wretched state, she still retains a few remnants of
her past nobility and sublime nature.
The poet compares India to a shipwreck. (Metaphor)
Just as a diver plunges into the depths of the sea to search in a wrecked ship for valuable
treasures and retrieve them, the poet studies India’s past and writes poems about those treasured
moments in Indian history.
guerdon –reward
my efforts- the poet’s efforts (of writing poems on the past glory of India)
fallen – in a ruined state
kind –loving
wish- blessing
My fallen country! - The figure of speech is Apostrophe
The poet demonstrates his selfless patriotic feelings by asserting that he expects no worldly
rewards for his efforts to regain the glory of his country. He wishes to have only the loving
blessing of his Mother country.