Produced by Judith Boss.

THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD

BY

SAROJINI NAIDU

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ARTHUR SYMONS

DEDICATED TO EDMUND GOSSE WHO FIRST SHOWED ME THE WAY TO THEGOLDEN THRESHOLD

London, 1896 Hyderabad, 1905

CONTENTS

FOLK SONGS

  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

SONGS FOR MUSIC

  Song of a Dream
  Humayun to Zobeida
  Autumn Song Alabaster
  Ecstasy
  To my Fairy Fancies

POEMS

  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

INTRODUCTION

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

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