The Hindu School, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, David Hare and Radhakanta Deb, is indubitably one of the major cornerstones in the history of institutional education in Bengal. The college produced many avant garde philanthropists and educationists who were later to be active participants in the Bengal Renaissance movement.
The poem is in the form of a sonnet that eulogizes the contemporary youth. According to the speaker, the building blocks of the day function as the foundation tomorrow and hence have to moulded in the right direction. The students expand like the petals of a young flower in the practice of blooming. The metaphor of the flower connotes ideas of the prospects of blossoming coupled with a sense of freshness, rawness, emanating fragrance and essence, rendering the whole process natural. There is also the implication of a new vision or perspective. The poet watches the gentle opening of their minds as it gradually unfolds like the fragile petals of a flower. The difference between ‘look’ and ‘watch’ is that you look at a static object but you watch a kinetic object/frame. So, each movement of the students’ mind is studied by the poet Derozio, as he analyzes their progress.

They are all united in the awe and inspiration that education instills in them. In their formative stage they are bound to themselves in their rawness, and to each other. They are also bound by the identity of the institution. Gradually their individual personalities begin to loosen out and assert themselves as they unfold in different directions. They also shed their former inhibitions and become more flexible and adaptive to life. Their intellectual energies and power stretch themselves like young birds in soft summer hours only to assert their freedom and individuality. The reference to birds implies how they will soon migrate after maturing; and allude to their alighting and their flight. Their wings, their individual capacities, test their capabilities. The winds of circumstances direct them and condition them.

The freshening April showers bless them with early knowledge that comes from firsthand experience. April shower also connotes summer-rain. The early education is refreshing on their parched minds. Perceptions that are countless/ unranked (unnumbered), shed their influence on them as they continue to multiply, as one paves the way for a newer one. New perceptions are likened to trees that shed their leaves enlightening the students and encompassing them in their shadow. Derozio tries to bring in the truth; he was against conventional dogmatic constructs that was far from the rational. Joyance showers on him like blessings as he pictures the students not only blooming but blossoming into the famous intellectuals of tomorrow. They are the “mirror of futurity” in that they reflect the future and also his teachings for posterity. They will weave their chaplets of knowledge or the title that will adorn their identities. The students will unite like the beads of a chaplet/rosary to bring laurels and prayers to the institution.

Thereby, the speaker will feel that his knowledge has not been in vain, as it survives even after his death. His passion for his fellowmen and nature is combined in the prescribed poem. Mr. Oaten states “For in both Keats and Derozio there was a passionate temperament combined with unbounded sympathy with nature and fellowmen. Both died while their powers were not yet fully developed.”

© Rukhaya MK 2013

The content is the copyright of Rukhaya MK. Any line reproduced from the article has to be appropriately documented by the reader. ©Rukhaya MK. All rights reserved.