The Full Text of “The Bangle Sellers”
1Bangle sellers are we who bear
2Our shining loads to the temple fair...
3Who will buy these delicate, bright
4Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
5Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
6For happy daughters and happy wives.
7Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
8Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
9Some are flushed like the buds that dream
10On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
11Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
12To the limpid glory of new born leaves.
13Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
14Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
15Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
16Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
17Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
18Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.
19Some are purple and gold flecked grey
20For she who has journeyed through life midway,
21Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
22And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
23And serves her household in fruitful pride,
24And worships the gods at her husband's side.
The Full Text of “The Bangle Sellers”
1Bangle sellers are we who bear
2Our shining loads to the temple fair...
3Who will buy these delicate, bright
4Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
5Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
6For happy daughters and happy wives.
7Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
8Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
9Some are flushed like the buds that dream
10On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
11Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
12To the limpid glory of new born leaves.
13Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
14Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
15Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
16Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
17Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
18Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.
19Some are purple and gold flecked grey
20For she who has journeyed through life midway,
21Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
22And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
23And serves her household in fruitful pride,
24And worships the gods at her husband's side.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Introduction
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In Sarojini Naidu's "The Bangle Sellers," a chorus of mysterious peddlers hawk their wares: bangles (or bracelets) that are clearly more than just bangles. Through their evocative colors—the green of spring leaves, the gold of summer corn, the soft purple of autumn skies—these bangles come to symbolize the different stages of a traditional Indian woman's life. The progression from daughter to wife to mother, this poem suggests, is as lovely and natural as the turn of the seasons. Naidu, a noted Indian politician and freedom fighter as well as a poet, first published this poem in her 1912 collection The Bird of Time.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Summary
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We are the bangle sellers, and we carry our gleaming goods to the beautiful temple. Who will buy these elegant, rainbow-colored, luminous bracelets? These are shining markers of well-lived and beautiful lives, and they're meant for happy daughters and wives.
Some of them are suitable for a young unmarried lady. They're silvery-blue, like mist on a mountain. Or they're blush pink, like the buds that nod over the mouth of a stream in the woods. Or they gleam a bright clear green, like the color of fresh new leaves.
Some are golden as fields of corn in the sun, and these ones are suitable for a bride on the morning of her marriage. Some burn the colors of her ceremonial marriage fire, or shine the same deep color as her love for her husband-to-be. They gleam and tinkle like the sounds of her laughter and tears on her wedding day.
Some are purple or grey speckled with gold, and these are suitable for middle-aged mothers—women who have tenderly cared for many beautiful baby boys, who take pride in homemaking, and who faithfully practice their religion alongside their husbands.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Themes
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The Rhythmic Beauty of Women's Lives
“The Bangle Sellers” is a hymn to the beauty of women’s life cycles and to femininity itself—in particular, to an idealized vision of Indian femininity from the turn of the 20th century, when Naidu was writing. Womanhood, the poem suggests, follows a rhythm as natural and lovely as that of the seasons.
The poem’s speakers, a mysterious crew of “bangle sellers” (that is, people who sell bracelets), describe their offerings one by one. The qualities of each bangle are clearly related to important moments in a girl’s life as she grows up and becomes a woman. The bangle sellers say as much themselves: these “lustrous tokens” represent the “radiant lives” of “happy daughters and happy wives.”
For a “maiden” (an unmarried girl), for example, there are bangles whose colors resemble new “buds” and “new born leaves,” symbolically relating the girl’s youth to the dreamy springtime. For a newly married woman, there are bangles that resemble “fields of sunlit corn” and “the flame of her marriage fire.” In other words, they evoke the summery heat and passion of her sexual awakening. Finally, bangles in cool, autumnal tones of “purple and gold-flecked grey” suit a wise, mature woman who has raised a family and “worships the gods at her husband’s side.”
Through their symbolic connection both to the turning of the year and to feminine beauty (the bangles are jewelry, after all!), the bangles suggest that womanhood is as lovely and natural as the changing year. A well-lived woman’s life, this poem implies, follows a timeworn traditional rhythm, and each of its “seasons” can be worn with pride, like a beautiful ornament.
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Ideals of Indian Femininity
In marking out the rhythms of an Indian woman’s life, “The Bangle Sellers” offers a prescription for what an ideal woman’s life should be like. As the mysterious bangle sellers offer a bracelet for every kind of woman, from eager maiden to respectable matron, they also tell readers something about how those women are meant to act and feel. “Happy daughters and happy wives” in early 20th-century India, the bangle sellers hint, should follow a time-honored pattern of behavior.
A “maiden,” for starters, should be all hope and expectancy. The bangles the peddlers offer to her all symbolize springy anticipation: they’re the color of buds, mists, and “new born leaves,” images of innocent, barely formed new life. Much of what a young girl should be doing, in other words, is maturing, eagerly preparing herself for her next phase of life.
That phase is getting married. The second stage of a woman’s life involves becoming a happy bride, rejoicing in getting her “heart’s desire”: a husband. The third and final stage is her mature matronhood, in which she raises “fair sons,” “serves her household,” and “worships the gods at her husband’s side.”
All of these behaviors, attitudes, and roles reflect the cultural traditions of India around the turn of the century, when Naidu was writing—right down to the implication that the ideal woman produces more “fair sons” than daughters! Happy Indian womanhood, in this poem’s vision, revolves around homemaking and piety, with a dash of sensual delight for seasoning.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Bangle Sellers”
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Lines 1-6
Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.“The Bangle Sellers” begins with what feels like a scene from a fairy tale. A chorus of the titular bangle sellers—that is, peddlers who sell bracelets—sing together of how they carry their “shining loads” of jewelry to a beautiful “temple” to sell them. This poem, then, is their peddler’s chant, their way of attracting customers.
But right away, these guys don’t seem like ordinary street merchants. They’re not just offering simple jewelry, but:
[...] delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light [...]The imagery here suggests there’s something magical and extraordinary about these bracelets. Every color of the rainbow, they shine with a light of their own; clearly, they’re poised to mean something.
An early hint of the bangles’ symbolism arrives when the peddlers declare that these bracelets are made to be:
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.These ornaments, in other words, are meant to adorn women living their best lives. And those best lives, this poem will suggest, are highly traditional ones. They’re also lives defined in terms of relationships. If one is a “happy” woman, the bangle sellers’ song suggests, one is either in the “daughter” phase of one’s life or the “wife” phase—identified, either way, by one’s connection to a family.
This, then, will be a poem in praise of a traditional way of feminine life (and, more particularly, an Indian way of life, as the reader will see). The bangle sellers aren’t merely offering jewelry, but symbolic tokens of a woman’s life well lived.
The poem will present its vision of female happiness and harmony in a fittingly harmonious form. Each of the poem’s sestets (or six-line stanzas) is written in flexible, pulsing accentual meter. That means that the lines all use the same number of beats (four, in this case), but don’t stick to any one kind of metrical foot. Here’s how that sounds in the first two lines:
Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...Readers might also notice that these two lines form a rhyming couplet. The whole poem will be written in these crisp paired rhymes.
All together, the poem sounds as harmonious and well-ordered as the idealized lives it describes.
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Lines 7-12
Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new born leaves. -
Lines 13-18
Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear. -
Lines 19-24
Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband's side.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Symbols
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The Bangles
The bangles symbolize the stages of a woman’s life and relate them to the seasons. Through their colors—from new-leaf green to sober-but-sparkly “gold flecked grey”—each of the bracelets speaks to feminine experiences. Spring-colored bangles represent a young girl’s excitement and anticipation; summery golden bangles a bride’s joy on her wedding day; cool autumnal bangles the gentle stability of a married lady’s life. Symbolically linked both to female beauty (as jewelry) and the seasons (through their colors), the bangles suggest that women’s lives, like the seasons, should move to a rhythm both beautiful and predictable.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem’s rich imagery links the bangle sellers’ bracelets to the seasons of the year and to the seasons of women’s lives.
The bangle sellers’ wares aren’t just any bracelets. These, the bangle sellers sing, are “delicate, bright / Rainbow-tinted circles of light,” tokens that gleam with magical significance. Their rainbow colors, the bangle sellers go on to say, make them “meet” (or fitting) for women in different stages of life:
- Maidens, unmarried girls, get bangles in all the colors of spring: the pink of a “flushed” bud, the “limpid” (or transparent) green of “new born leaves,” and the “silver and blue” of a dawn mist.
- New brides get bangles in passionate summery colors: the gold of “sunlit corn” and the flaming orange and red of a “marriage fire.” More mysteriously, their bangles might be “rich with the hue of her heart’s desire,” the same color as her passion for her new husband—a vibrant red, perhaps?
- And middle-aged mothers get cool tones that conjure up autumn and winter skies: “purple and gold flecked grey,” subtle colors with just a hint of sparkle.
This imagery helps readers to picture a tray of magically “luminous” jewelry, bracelets of deep and flashing color. Each of these bangles summons both a mood and a scene. What the bangle sellers are really offering are the pleasures of an ideal woman’s life, a life lived in tune with nature and tradition.
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Simile
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Repetition
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Allusion
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Alliteration
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"The Bangle Sellers" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Bangle
- Bear
- Lustrous
- Radiant
- Meet
- Flushed
- Tranquil
- Cleaves
- Limpid
- Marriage fire
- Blest
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Bracelet.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Bangle Sellers”
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Form
“The Bangle Sellers” is written in four sestets (or six-line stanzas). The first stanza introduces the bangle sellers themselves, a mysterious group whose enchanting wares are far more than mere jewelry. Each subsequent stanza links a group of bangles to a stage of a woman’s life: bright, fresh springtime colors for a young “maiden,” summery golds and flame colors for a bride, and sober, elegant “purple and gold flecked grey” for middle-aged ladies.
This simple, orderly shape suits the poem’s central idea: that a woman’s life should ideally fall into a natural, wholesome, and beautiful rhythm, steady as the seasons.
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Meter
“The Bangle Sellers” is written in accentual meter. That means that, while the poem uses the same number of beats per line—in this case, four—it doesn't stick to any one type of metrical foot, like the iamb or the dactyl. Here’s how the meter sounds in lines 1-2:
Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...This easy, natural meter—common in folk poetry of all sorts, from nursery rhymes to ballads—makes the bangle sellers’ song feel ancient, mysterious, and magical. There’s nothing tricky or formal going on here: the sellers offer their wares in a relaxed, hypnotic chant, a rhythm that sonically links their bangles to the seasonal rhythms of life the poem describes.
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Rhyme Scheme
“The Bangle Sellers” uses a simple rhyme scheme of couplets, like this:
AABBCC
Alongside a swaying, weaving accentual meter, this rhyme scheme makes the poem feel as simple, rhythmic, and natural as the way of life it describes. Just as a maiden becomes a bride becomes a matron, each new rhyme swiftly finds a neat match, forming an orderly and predictable pattern.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Speaker
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This poem’s speaker is a chorus: a group of mysterious “bangle sellers” offering their alluring wares. These aren’t ordinary street peddlers hawking bracelets. What they’re really selling seems to be a vision of idealized femininity—in particular, idealized Indian femininity. Each of the bracelets they offer represents a traditional stage in a woman’s life, from the new-leaf green bangle of eager, springy girlhood to the sober “gold flecked grey” bangle of middle-aged homemaking.
The link between the bangles and the seasons of life makes the sellers themselves feel less like ordinary peddlers and more like the wise forces of time and nature, offering up the pleasures "meet" for women of all ages.
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“The Bangle Sellers” Setting
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Readers only get a glimpse of this poem’s setting; for the most part, the poem’s eye focuses tightly on the bangle sellers’ trays of luminous wares. However, a few little context clues make it clear that the poem takes place in Naidu’s native India. The bangle sellers offer their goods on the steps of the “temple,” a wedding is celebrated with a “marriage fire,” and a middle-aged lady “worships the gods at her husband’s side”—all allusions to the author’s own traditional Hindu beliefs. The poem’s vision of an ideal woman’s life cycle is thus rooted in a particular culture and a particular religion.
For that matter, the poem's view of ideal Indian womanhood suggests the poem takes place in Naidu's time, too. She published this poem in 1912, when it was still very much the case that—for instance—giving birth to "fair sons" would be considered more of a blessing than having any number of daughters!
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Bangle Sellers”
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Literary Context
Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was an Indian poet and politician, sometimes called the “Nightingale of India.” Alongside Mahatma Gandhi, she resisted British colonial rule, traveling across the world to speak for Indian interests. She was also a noted feminist who campaigned for women’s emancipation. In the last years of her life, she would become the governor of the region now known as Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s largest states—the first woman to hold such a position in India.
Alongside tireless political work, Naidu was a prolific and beloved poet. She was inspired by English writers like W.B. Yeats and Edmund Gosse and chose to write her musical, elegant poetry in English. Over the course of her career, she produced five volumes of poetry; this poem appeared in her second book, The Bird of Time (1912).
Naidu is remembered as an Indian feminist hero. Her birthday is still celebrated across India as Women’s Day.
Historical Context
Naidu was a major figure in the struggle for Indian independence from the British Raj—that is, British colonial rule over India. This period began insidiously in the 18th century, emerging from the growing influence of the East India Company. This massive British trade organization slowly involved itself in India’s governance, then became India’s governance—and then became indistinguishable from British governance as the British Parliament involved itself in the company’s affairs. By the late 19th century (when Naidu was born), Queen Victoria considered herself Empress of India.
As the century wore to a close, an organized Indian Nationalist movement arose to push back against colonial rule. Naidu would become a famous leader in what was known as the Indian National Congress, working alongside Mahatma Gandhi in a campaign of nonviolent resistance against British rule.
After long years of (often not at all nonviolent) struggle, Britain at last relinquished the last of its power in India in 1947. It didn’t go without leaving chaos in its wake, though: the Indian Independence Act required that the country abruptly be divided into two pieces, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. This sudden division, known as the Partition of India, resulted in horrible chaos and bloodshed as opposing religious factions hurried to get to the land designated theirs (and clashed along the way).
Naidu, a Hindu, would become the governor of what were then known as the United Provinces (now the state of Uttar Pradesh) in the wake of this chaos, holding the position for two years before her death.
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More “The Bangle Sellers” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Naidu's life and work via the British Library.
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Footage of Naidu — Watch a video of Naidu introducing herself to an American audience in 1928.
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Naidu as a Politician — Learn more about Naidu's political career.
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Naidu's Legacy — Read an article about Women's Day, the Indian holiday celebrated on Naidu's birthday.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Sarojini Naidu
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