Produced by Judith Boss.
London, 1896 Hyderabad, 1905
Palanquin-Bearers
Wandering Singers
Indian Weavers
Coromandel Fishers
The Snake-Charmer
Corn-Grinders
Village-Song
In Praise of Henna
Harvest Hymn
Indian Love-Song
Cradle-Song
Suttee
Song of a Dream
Humayun to Zobeida
Autumn Song Alabaster
Ecstasy
To my Fairy Fancies
Ode to H. H. the Nizam of Hyderabad
In the Forest
Past and Future Life
The Poet's Love-Song
To the God of Pain
The Song of Princess Zeb-un-nissa
Indian Dancers
My Dead Dream
Damayante to Nala in the Hour of Exile
The Queen's Rival
The Poet to Death
The Indian Gipsy
To my Children
The Pardah Nashin
To Youth
Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad
Street Cries
To India
The Royal Tombs of Golconda
To a Buddha seated on a Lotus
It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. Theearliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when thewriter was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from Indiain 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think,almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to havean individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to bepublished. The writer hesitated. "Your letter made me veryproud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it possible that I havewritten verses that are 'filled with beauty,' and is it possiblethat you really think them worthy of being given to the world?You know how high my ideal of Art is; and to me my poor casuallittle poems seem to be less than beautiful—I mean with thatfinal enduring beauty that I desire." And, in another letter,she writes: "I am not a poet really. I have the vision and thedesire, but not the voice. If I could write just one poem fullof beauty and the spirit of greatness, I should be exultantlysilent for ever; but I sing just as the birds do, and my songsare as ephemeral." It is for this bird-like quality of song, itseems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint, in a sort ofdelicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament ofa woman of the East, finding expression through a Westernlanguage and under partly Western influences. They do notexpress the whole of that temperament; but they express, I think,its essence; and there is an Eastern magic in them.
Sarojini Chattopadhyay was born at Hyderabad on February 13,1879. Her father, Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, is descendedfrom the ancient family of Chattorajes of Bhramangram, who werenoted throughout Eastern Bengal as patrons of Sanskrit learning,and for their practice of Yoga. He took his degree of Doctor ofScience at the University of Edinburgh in 1877, and afterwardsstudied brilliantly at Bonn. On his return to India he foundedthe Nizam College at Hyderabad, and has since laboured incessantly,and at great personal sacrifice, in the cause of education.
Sarojini was the eldest of a large fami