Coromandel Fishers by Sarojini Naidu
Quick answer: Read Coromandel Fishers by Sarojini Naidu: a 1905 dawn work song of freedom and the sea, with a stanza-by-stanza reading and craft lessons for poets.
Sarojini Naidu published Coromandel Fishers in 1905 in her first collection, The Golden Threshold. It is a short work song, three quatrains spoken by a fisherman who calls his brothers out to sea at first light along the Coromandel coast, the long eastern shore of southern India. Naidu, later a leading voice in the freedom movement, wrote it years before that public life, yet the poem already carries her ear for chant, her love of the natural world, and a quiet argument about who truly owns the sea.
Read it aloud and you hear why it survives in classrooms across India. The lines are long, rolling, and built to be sung by men hauling nets, so the rhythm does half the work of the meaning. Underneath the salt air and the gulls there is a claim to freedom: the sea is home, the shore is a place you leave, and the tide belongs to the men brave enough to ride it.
The poem
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!
Sarojini Naidu, 'Coromandel Fishers' (1905), public domain
What the poem says
The poem moves in three quatrains. In the first, a fisherman wakes his brothers at dawn: the sky is praying to the morning light, the wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn, and it is time to gather the nets and set the catamarans free to capture the leaping wealth of the tide. The second stanza answers fear by naming the sea as family: the sea is their mother, the cloud their brother, the waves their comrades. The third weighs the sweetness of the shore against the sweeter call of the open water.
How it works: the chant
Naidu builds the poem as a work song, and the long swinging lines are the point. Each stanza opens with a call, 'Rise, brothers, rise', and rides a loose four-beat pulse that matches the rhythm of oars and hauled rope. She leans on kinship metaphors so the dangerous sea feels domestic, then on a comparative turn in the final stanza, sweet is the shore but sweeter the foam, that tips the balance from land toward water. Very little is described in close detail; the music carries the feeling.
A quiet claim to freedom
Call these fishermen kings of the sea and you have said something. They are poor men in small boats, yet the poem hands them a kingdom the land never gave them. Written when Naidu was still years from her role in India's freedom struggle, the piece already prefers the free, risky water to the safe, settled shore. You can read it simply as a sea idyll, or as an early sketch of the liberty she would later spend her life defending.
What a poet can learn
The lesson is that rhythm can argue. Naidu never lectures about courage or freedom; she lets a chant do the persuading. If you draft something in this spirit, Writory's monthly contest takes entries from the 1st to the 25th, posts results on the 30th, and shows every entrant their score.
What poets can take from this
- Read any work song aloud first; if the beat does not carry your hand or your feet, the line is not finished.
- Pick one landscape, here a coast, and let all your images grow from it rather than reaching for unrelated comparisons.
- Turn danger into kinship: naming a threat as family or friend can do more than describing the threat directly.
- Use a repeated opening call to give a poem the feel of many voices, not one.
- End on a preference, not a summary, so the reader leaves knowing where the poem's heart lies.
Try it yourself
Write a three-stanza work song in the voice of people who share one daily labour (fishers, farmers, weavers, night-shift nurses). Open each stanza with the same spoken call, keep the lines long and singable, and let the last stanza choose the risky, free thing over the safe one.
Questions
Is Coromandel Fishers in the public domain?
Yes. It was first published in 1905 in The Golden Threshold, so the text is long out of copyright and free to quote and study. You can reprint the full poem without permission.
What is the Coromandel coast?
It is the southeastern shoreline of India, running along the Bay of Bengal through Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Naidu grew up in Hyderabad and drew on this coastal world for the poem's fishermen, nets and catamarans.
Is the poem really about freedom or just about fishing?
Both, and the two are hard to separate. On the surface it is a dawn work song, but its praise of the open sea over the settled shore reads easily as an early expression of the liberty Naidu would later champion in public life.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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