Sarojini's poetic output has been meagre but qualitative. Her early verses were entirely English in form and content, but a timely advice of Sir Gosse turned her to her native land for themes and raw materials. Exquisitely did she sing about the beauty of the Indian landscape, about the common man and woman, about the Hindu-Muslim unity, and about the country's subjection under the Britishers. With a stroke of good luck, she came in touch with such distinguished literary personalities of the day as Edmund Gosse and Arthur Symons, who showed her, as she has confessed, the path to the Golden Threshold of Poetry, the path from which she never swerved. Later, she thrived on her own poetic merits, and not on anyone's recommendations.

Poetry came to Sarojini, as we know, as a natural gift, and she could not help writing it when the mood overpowered her. She had received it by way of inheritance: her parents were also composers of charming verses. The romantic surroundings of Hyderabad and the short stay in England unquestionably quickened Sarojini's poetic perception, and whatever she wrote thereafter reflects the maturity of her mind and the fullness of her heart.

I. THE POETIC CREED

It was the desire of beauty that made Sarojini a poetess; her "nerves of delight" were always quivering at the contact of beauty. Her eyes turned towards beauty as the sunflower turns towards the sun, opening wider and wider until one saw nothing but the eyes. Like Keats, she was an adorer of Beauty. In one of her letters to Arthur Symons, she wrote: "Your letter made me very proud and very sad. Is it possible that I have written verses that are "filled with beauty ', and is it possible that 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 casual little poems seem to be less than beautiful I mean with that final enduring beauty that I desire".¹ In another letter, she noted down: "I am not a poet really. I have the vision and the desire but not the voice. If I could write just one poem full of beauty and the spirit of greatness, I should be exultantly silent for ever; but I sing just as the birds do, and my songs are as ephemeral".² Out of the beautiful, Sarojini used to derive "a strange sensation"³ which lifted her up and transformed her into an elfin spirit.

Sarojini wanted to give to the world something of lasting value, something wrought with fine artistry. In one of her letters to Edmund Gosse, she wrote: "While I live, it will always be the supreme desire of my soul to write poetry one poem, one line of enduring verse even. Perhaps I shall die without realising that longing which is at once an exquisite joy and an unspeakable anguish to me."⁴ Sarojini, who aimed at perfection and excellence in art, did realise "that longing" by composing enduring verses, and has shown that her early sad apprehension was "needless". One of her enduring poems is "Palanquin-Bearers", which is partly quoted here for the delight and judgment of the reader:

Lightly, O lightly, we bear her along,
She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;
She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream,
She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream.
Gaily, O gaily we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

(p. 3).

It is a poem of great artistic beauty and has a rhythmic swing in it which is well in accord with the soft onward movement of the palanquin-bearers.

II. THE BIRD-LIKE QUALITY OF SONG

Sarojini was primarily "a singer of songs" and "a songbird". She has been called "the Nightingale of India". The first thing that strikes us in reading her poetry is her exquisite melody and fine delicacy of feeling and expression blended with freshness and exuberance of spirit. Arthur Symons valued her poetry for "this bird-like quality of song.'⁵. Prof. Vishwanathan has rightly pointed out that it would be a closed mind to think that she was not a song-bird.⁶ Sarojini did not seek to grapple with life's intricate problems as does a philosopher. For her there were only situations that made her nerves tingle and stirred her into quivering songs. Life for her was not a riddle to be solved, but a miracle to be sung and celebrated. Its endless variety excited her, its colours dazzled her, its beauty intoxicated her. Her spontaneous response to it may be interpreted by some people as her weakness, but in this lies also her strength the secret of her perennial youthfulness. Prof B. S. Mathur thinks that Sarojini was "a supreme singer of beautiful songs, songs bathed in melody and thoughts",⁸ especially so in her Indian folk-songs, one of which is "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid":

I carried my curds to the Mathura fair . . .
How softly the heifers were lowing . . .
I wanted to cry, "Who will buy
These curds that are white as the clouds in the sky
When the breezes of Shrawan are blowing?"
But my heart was so full of your beauty, Beloved,
They laughed as I cried without knowing:
Govinda! Govinda!
Govinda! Govinda! . . .
How softly the river was flowing! (p. 112).

This is the first stanza of the poem which is sung to Indian tunes, and which nicely evokes the image of a soft, rhythmic flow not only in the river Yamuna but also in the heart of the singer. The "mantric effect"⁹ produced by it in the repetition of "Govinda" is really unforgettable.

HI. THE LYRICAL IMPULSE

There can be no two opinions about the predominance of lyrical impulse in Sarojini's poetry. Her poems are mostly short swallow flights of fancy. Some are effusions of the rapture of Spring, some others transport us into a world of inner ecstasy and spiritual elation, and many others quiver with the passion of love. There are some poems which enable us to peer into India's luminous past. In Sarojini's poetry the lyric appeal is "various and wonderful and full of the magic of melody".¹⁰ Among her notable lyrics, one may mention "The Festival of Memory", "Palanquin-Bearers", "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus", "Wandering Singers", "Guerdon", etc. As a matter of fact, the poetess, when inspired, cannot live at a lower level, this is clearly borne out by the poem "Guerdon", which will inevitably "take its place among the lyrical classics".¹¹ A critic has even suggested that Sarojini's metrical accomplishment is part of her lyricism.¹²

IV. WIDE SYMPATHIES

It is somewhat difficult to conceive of a true lyric poet with narrow sympathies. As regards Sarojini, she has very aptly kept her antipathies, if any, out of her poetry. Her sympathetic interpretation of life has covered a wide range of subjects, and the poems like "Corn-Grinders" and "The Pardah Nashin" are evidently inspired by her sympathy for the sufferer and downtrodden. The opening stanza of "Corn-Grinders", quoted below, is an illustration of this:

O little mouse, why dost thou cry
While merry stars laugh in the sky?
Alas! Alas! my lord is dead!
Ah, who will ease my bitter pain?
He went to seek a millet-grain
In the rich farmer's granary shed;
They caught him in a baited snare,
And slew my lover unaware . . .
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.

(p. 9).

Sarojini sympathized not only with human beings but also with birds, flowers, animals and insects. Surrounded by all forms of natural beauty and innocent joy, she felt herself one with the vital rhythm of the world and became almost a part of the expanding life of birds and flowers, animals and insects. Her sympathetic attitude towards the different religions of the world is well reflected in "The Call to Evening Prayer". She depicted the Hindu and Muslim ways of life with equal zeal and devotion. In fact, she was "at home everywhere and at all kinds of gatherings",¹³ and this evidently speaks of "the greatness and richness of her personality".¹⁴

V. THE ROMANTIC FERVOUR

Sarojini's poetry belongs to the Romantic school, but it is the romance that in its most passionate mood leaves no ashes in the mouth. She has lingered in the Garden of Kama, but with larger eyes and a less heavy chin. She has not become, as Edmund Gosse says she hoped to, "a Goethe or a Keats for India", but she has certainly become a far more living entity than a mere reflection of either: she has become Sarojini Naidu, with her own distinctive qualities. Keats and Shelley were undoubtedly her early models; in her impassioned lyrical outpourings she is very close to Shelley, and in her perfectly sensuous apprehension of thought and feeling she is near the heart of Keats. But there is hardly any trace of derivative impulse in her work except for the use of a few conventional words and phrases.

VI. THE PHILOSOPHICAL STRAIN

There is a grain of truth in the assertion that poetry, especially lyrical, expresses a philosophy of life. Poetry attempts the emotional appreciation of the universe, while science tries to understand it through the intellect. As philosophy is no other than an explanation of life, every lyrical poet unconsciously expounds it.¹⁵

In Sarojini's case, an undercurrent of serious thought runs in some of her poems.¹⁶ "Indian Weavers" is a glaring example of it:

Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Weavers, weaving at fall of night,
Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .
Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,
We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.
Weavers, weaving solemn and still,
What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .
White as a feather and white as a cloud,
We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

(p. 5).

This poem is reflective in nature, and its flow and melody should not blur its thought.

Sarojini's poetry has a message to deliver to mankind. It is the message of a self-surrendering life of love in the midst of Nature or of an indomitable struggle of love on behalf of the poor, the lowly, and the suffering. Sarojini's is "a philosophy of giving away one's love and energy in the cause of good in the living present, supremely hopeful of the ultimate destiny and supremely happy in the privilege of giving".¹⁷ The poetess had acutely experienced the blows and buffets of life and identified herself with the sorrow-stricken people:

O Fate, betwixt the grinding-stones of Pain,
Tho' you have crushed my life like broken grain,
Lo! I will leaven it with my tears and knead
The bread of Hope to comfort and to feed
The myriad hearts for whom no harvests blow
Save bitter herbs of woe.

(p. 174).

These lines from the poem "Invincible" speak of Sarojini's disillusionment and grasp of reality. In them emotion is blended with talent, art with thought. Sarojini was actually two things in one: a supreme artist and a fine melodist with the background of an intense thinker.¹⁸ It is a different question whether her thought is methodical or not. The obvious fact is that she is basically a creature of emotions who is momentarily touched by the splendour of thought.

Sarojini wrote some mystic verses in her hours of thoughtful exaltation. Her appreciation of Truth led her to a consideration of Man, God, the Universe, their interrelationship, Life and Death. Her three poems found a place in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. In one of these, she says:

I, bending from my sevenfold height,
Will teach thee of quickening grace,
Life is a prism of My light,
And Death the shadow of My face.

("The Soul's Prayer", p. 124).

In another, she seems to be in a challenging mood:

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom,
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mystic terror of the tomb?
For my glad heart is drunk and drenched with Thee,
O inmost Wine of living ecstasy!
O intimate essence of eternity!
("In Salutation to the Eternal Peace", p. 137).

The mystical note is well-pronounced in the two poems partly reproduced here. The third one is addressed to Lord Buddha seated on a Lotus. In it the poetess expresses her desire to attain Nirvana:

The end, elusive and after,
Still lures us with its beckoning flight,
And all our mortal moments are
A session of the Infinite.
How shall we reach the great, unknown
Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?

("To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus", p. 62).

These three poems are not the only mystic verses which Sarojini wrote; her four slender volumes are rather sprinkled with a philosophy of life and other-worldly vision. She did not, however, strive to formulate a systematic sequence of poetic thought, and when she did it at all, as in "The Temple" in The Broken Wing, she was not convincing to the reader.¹⁹

VII. IMAGERY

Sarojini wove a rich tapestry of images in her poetry. Her images are usually impressive and impressionistic; they are also varied and sublime. They are mostly drawn from nature, myth, legend, country-scenes and the fairy kingdoms, which are far removed from our work-a-day world. They are like the dance of the dew on the wings of a moon-beam, or the veil glowing with the hues of a lapwing's crest. They tend to confirm the fact that Sarojini was a woman of high poetic sensibility and delicate imagination, and give us an idea of her ornate poetry abounding in a luxuriant feast of similes and metaphors. Her "Palanquin-Bearers", "The Snake-Charmer", and "Humayun to Zobeida" are nothing but a kind of catalogue of images put together.

It has been pointed out that Omar Khayyam influenced Sarojini with his images, and that she was a scholar in Persian and Urdu and so repeatedly brought in images of the Islamic world.²⁰ An unfailing resourcefulness of appropriate epithets, metaphors and similes rendered her imagery graphically graspable. Thus, in "Leili", the poetess compares the moon to a caste-mark:

A caste-mark on the azure brows of Heaven,
The golden moon burns sacred, solems, bright. . .

(p. 31).

Another instance of brilliant imagery is "Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad", in which she gives us:

See how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon's throat,
Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote.

(p. 55).

And again:

Over the city bridge Night comes majestical,
Borne like a queen to a sumptuous festival.

(p. 56).

Some other poems having natural images are: "On Juhu Sands", "In Praise of Gulmohur Blossom", "Golden Cassia" and "Coromandel Fishers". In the lastnamed poem, one finds the image of the dance of the wild foam's glee which is reminiscent of Wordsworth's golden daffodils "The waves beside them danced, but they/Out-did the sparkling waves in glee". Another apt yet startling image in the same poem is to be found in:

Row, brothers, row to the blue of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.

(p. 7).

Sarojini introduced impressionistic images in "Indian Love-Song", wherein the morning sows her "tents of gold on fields of ivory", in "Cradle-Song", wherein the wild fire-flies dance "through the fairy neem", and in "To the God of Pain", wherein the flower-like dreams and the gem-like fire of hopes upleap "like the light of dawn".

VIII. SYMBOLISM

Some of Sarojini's poems have symbolistic overtones. As a symbolist, she was influenced by Arthur Symons, whose The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) proved to be epoch-making. The symbols employed by her are both traditional and personal. Traditional symbols, as we know, are stock symbols used in literature since immemorial days, but personal symbols being new and arbitrary pose some difficulty for the reader.

In "The Indian Gipsy", the gipsy girl, who is twin-born with primal mysteries and drinks of life at Time's forgotten source, is a symbolic representation of the obscurity and oldness of Time. The serpents of "The Festival of Serpents" fill us with a sense of awe and apprehension of some felt mystery when we read following lines:

Swift are ye as streams and soundless as the dewfall,
Subtle as the lightning and splendid as the sun;
Seers are ye and symbols of the ancient silence,
Where life and death and sorrow and ecstasy are one.

(p. 111).

The last two lines are significant from the viewpoint of our discussion. "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid", has the repeated chanting of the name "Govinda" which reverberates with the ancient experience of fulfilment in identity (identity or merger with the Beloved and with the yearning of the Eternal Feminine for the Eternal Masculine). Similarly, the "slumbering sedges" that "catch from the stars some high tone of their mystical speech" in the poem "Solitude", and the "mystic Lotus" in the poem "The Lotus" are full of symbolic connotations.

IX. A SENSE OF HUMOUR

Sarojini had a remarkable sense of humour, and this was actually an integral part of her sharp mind. This unique quality made her a welcome person in any kind of gatherings. Her lively intelligence, her maddening interest in the good things of life, her jokes and jibes endeared her to everyone. She was quite responsive to the funny side of life. Sahib Singh Ahuja maintains that "She was a fount of bubbling humour wherever she was in a conference or committee room, in a circle of friends or even in jail."²¹ In dealing with Gandhiji, she never scrupled from making fun, and would call him "Mickey Mouse", and even said in his presence that he looked exactly like a bat.²² She was certainly a licensed jester in Gandhiji's little court. Her humour found its best expression in her letters and speeches. In one of her letters to Arthur Symons, she wrote: "Of all things that life or perhaps my temperament has given me I prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."²³ Sympathy and a sense of humour were natural gifts to her. Her humour, like the dedicate reserve of her manner, became a mask or a shelter for her. It supported or protected her in all favourable or unfavourable circumstances.

X. POWER OF DESCRIPTION

Sarojini was endowed with an immense descriptive power. She always described a scene or situation in accurate detail. Her method of description was natural, with or without comments or reflections according to the requirement. Instances of purely descriptive poems are: "Indian Dancers" and "Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad". In "The Indian Gipsy" and "June Sunset" we have good examples of description mingled with reflection. The poems in which reflection predominates over description are: "The Royal Tombs of Golconda" and "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus". Here it may be noted that the reflections are such as are appropriate to poetry; they make no pretence to great depth, but give us at any rate genuine poetry.²⁴

XL OTHER METHODS OF COMPOSITION

Apart from the descriptive method considered earlier, Sarojini employed various other methods of composition too.²⁵ The method of direct expression of the poetess's own personal feelings can be seen at work in "Love and Death", "Caprice", and "The Soul's Prayer". The love poems are direct utterances of her feelings, moods and ecstasies. The sole justification for revealing one's private feelings to the world is that they should have something of a universal quality about them and that they should be expressed more aptly and powerfully than the reader would usually do for himself. At times Sarojini spoke dramatically through the mouth of another person, either in monologue or dialogue. Most of the Indian Folk-Songs in The Golden Threshold are examples of the dramatic method. At other times the poetess adopted the method of direct address, such as in the Memorial Verses on "Ya Mahbub" and "Gokhale", in "In Salutation to My Father's Spirit", and in "Ode to H. H. the Nizam of Hyderabad".

XII. "AUTOCHTHONOUSNESS"

It was Sir Edmund Gosse who remarked that Sarojini was "in all things and to the fullest extent autochthonous."²⁶ What the noted critic meant thereby was that she sprang from the very soil of India; her spirit, though it employed the English language as its vehicle, had no other tie with the West, and addressed itself to the exposition of tropical and primitive emotions. The poetess employed purely Indian themes in her poetry. With the eager sensibility, she was always ready to receive impressions from all corners of the richly coloured Indian life throbbing around her. The commonest of sights and sounds, the shrillest of street cries, the humblest of her fellowmen: all had for her some peculiar intimation, some mysterious meaning. Out of the simple chants and homely joys of her people, she "fashioned a subtle, melodious measure, capable of an astonishing range of notes and rhythms."²⁷ The bazaars of Hyderabad, the palanquin-bearers, the weavers, the snake-charmers, the wandering beggar-minstrels: all inspired in the poetess a strange, rich mood, and she portrayed different walks of Indian life in the glittering pages of her poetry.

XIII. THEMES

The themes of Sarojini's poetry are usually drawn from Indian sources. In this respect, she was indebted to Edmund Gosse, who advised her to turn away from robins, skylarks and English landscapes and concentrate on "some revelation of the heart of India, some sincere penetrating analysis of Native passion, of the principles of antique religion and of such mysterious intimations as stirred the soul of the East, long before the West had begum to dream that it had a soul".²⁸

From the thematic point of view, Sarojini's poems fall into five heads: (1) nature poems, (2) love poems, (3) patriotic poems, (4) poems of life and death, and (5) poems of the Indian scene. We shall briefly consider these heads hereafter.

Nature was to Sarojini, as also to Wordsworth, a perennial source of inspiration. She wrote many lovely lyrics on natural scenes and sights. Her nature poetry is glutted with soft, delicate, hundred-hued blossoms, with honey sweetness, and with a hundred-toned music of the birds. That is what one comes across in her Spring poems which form a major portion of her nature poetry. A keen sense of beauty never missed her. There are striking similes, metaphors, images and rhythmic phrases in her poems. Not only soft aspects of Nature attracted her, but her terrific and cruel aspects, such as tempestuous oceans and volcanic eruptions and stormy winds, had their impact on her. The poetess often lent her personal moods to Nature, and hence her poems are only rarely realistic portrayals. Nature was to her what it was to Tennyson a background for the portraiture of human emotions.²⁹ Mrs. Sengupta, however, does not agree with this view.³⁰ Some of Sarojini's best-known nature poems are: "Leili", "Songs of the Springtime" (ten poems describing Spring in all its splendour), and "The Flowering Year" (six poems, of which "June Sunset" is the most charming), "Spring in Kashmir", "The Gloriosa Lily", "The Water Hyacinth", etc. Mark the following lines from "Spring in Kashmir":

Heart O my heart, hear the Springtime is calling
With her laugher, her music, her beauty
enthralling.
Thro' glade and thro' glen her winged feet let us
follow,
In the wake of the oriole, the sunbird and
swallow.

( The Feather of the Dawn, p. 14).

They reveal the very heart of the poetess that is now wholly taken up with the Springtime.

There are many delightful love songs in the four books of poetry by Sarojini Naidu. One may sort out such poems in this connection as "Indian Love-Song", "Humayun to Zobeida", "Ecstasy", "The Poet's Love-Song", "An Indian Love Song from the North", "A Rajput Love-Song", "Song of Radha, the Milkmaid", "The Temple", "The Flute-Player of Brindaban", "Perplext", "The Gift", "The Amulet", "Immutable", and "Songs of Radha". From the last-mentioned poem the following lines are being quoted for the enjoyment of the reader:

Krishna Murari, my radiant lover
Cometh. O sisters spread
Buds and ripe blossoms his couch to cover,
Silver and vermeil red.
With flowering branches the doorways darken,
Is that his flute call? Sisters hearken!
Why tarrieth he so long?
O like a leaf doth my shy heart shiver,
O like a wave do my faint limbs quiver.
Softly, softly, Jamuna river,
Sing thou our bridal song.

(The Feather of the Dawn, pp. 41-2).

The beloved lies in an anxious wait for the lover and all the preparations are ready to receive him, but he does not turn up immediately and this sends a shiver through her heart.

Obviously, about one third of Sarojini's poetry has love for its theme. Her love poetry traverses Love's almost whole expanse, with the possible exception of the neomodernist's display of naked sex and the Freudian subtle anatomization. It may also afford us little of intellectual companionship; it does possess sensuousness though not shameless sex. The kind of love we discover in Sarojini is actually inspired by the lofty ideals of self-sacrifice. There is much that is personal and conventional in it. Sarojini's love poetry reveals a variety of moods irony, hope, despair, challenge and ecstasy. Both aspects of love union and separation have been beautifully depicted. Sarojini drew inspiration from the medieval devotional poets, especially the Vaishnavites, and, like theirs, her poetry is usually colourful and romantic.

Sarojini's poetry throbs with the passionate love for the Motherland. There are some poems which express the poetess's devotion to her hopes of India's glorious renaissance. In this connection, one may remember poems such as "To India", "The Gift of India", and "The Lotus". The poem, "To India", is given below in full:

O young through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres,
Beget new glories from thine ageless womb!
The nations that in fettered darkness weep
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings

break....

Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep?
Arise and answer for thy children's sake!

Thy Future calls thee with a manifold sound
To crescent honours, splendours, victories vast;

Waken, O slumbering Mother, and be crowned,
Who once wert empress of the sovereign Past.

(p. 58).

For some of her poems Sarojini went to national leaders like Gokhale, Tilak, Gandhi, and Umar, who are immortalized in the opening pages of The Feather of the Dawn. "The Lotus" is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi, his sacredness and sublimity.

Sarojini wrote many poems dealing with the problems of life and death. "Life", "To the God of Pain", "Damayanti to Nala in the Hour of Exile", "The Poet to Death", "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus", "Dirge", "Love and Death", "Death and Life", "The Soul's Prayer", "A Challenge to Fate", "In Salutation to the Eternal Peace", and "Invincible" are the poems of life and death. The poetess had been through the varied experiences of life, and would long to get at the secret of life and death. This is her soul's prayer to God:

In childhood's pride I said to Thee:
"O Thou, who mad'st me of Thy breath,
Speak, Master, and reveal to me
Thine inmost laws of life and death...."

(p. 123).

All aspects of life carried a peculiar fascination for the poetess, and she sang gaily and spontaneously of them. But she was sometimes seized with fear, pain, and she uttered aloud of them too. Thus, in "To the God of Pain", she cried in a mood of agony:

I have no more to give, all that was mine
Is laid, a wrested tribute, at thy shrine;
Let me depart, for my whole soul is wrung,
And all my cheerless orisons are sung;
Let me depart, with faint limbs let me creep
To some dim shade and sink me down to sleep.

(p. 37).

Sarojini was, however, not cowed by pain or death and its attendant horrors. On the contrary, she occasionally hurled challenges to it, as also to fate, with all courage at her command.

In Sarojini's poetry we have many poems centred round the Indian scene. "Palanquin-Bearers", "Wandering Singers", "Indian Weavers", "Coromandel Fishers", "The Snake-Charmer", "Corn-Grinders", "Village-Song", "Harvest", "The Indian Gipsy", "Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad", "Street Cries", "Bangle-Sellers", "The Festival of Serpents", "Hymn to Indra, Lord of Rain", "Wandering Beggars", "Lakshmi, the Lotus-Born", "Kali the Mother", "Raksha Bandhan". "The Festival of the Sea", and "Kanhaya": all are taken from the Indian sources. Sarojini rarely touched modern industrialized life. Like W. B. Yeats, she was of an old-type aristocratic temperament that would love the gentle nobility of things and never feel at home with the drab of industrial life. The slum, the street arab, and the chimney smoke; the motorhorn, the locomotive or the pylon; the labourer and the labour-leader are all absent from her poetry.³¹ What appealed to her most was the varied pageantry of Indian life. Her poems of the Indian scene tend to be mostly objective and impersonal. The folk-songs charmed her as much as the picturesque scenes. She often painted the general impressions of the common life, but these impressions wanted in particularity as to the occurrence of place and time. Sarojini's scenes, therefore, remain generalized and conventional, and the principal reason of their appeal to us is that they almost invariably have a human context.

XIV. STYLE

Sarojini's style is her own and gives us an impression of her individuality. Arthur Symons saw in her poems "an individual beauty of their own".³² Sarojini did not imitate any particular English poet, or belonged to the school of any one master, or followed the formula of any particular group. She was, in fact, a sui generis.

There is a sense of refinement in Sarojini's style. Although all kinds of style suited her, she showed a propensity for the ornate style with the choicest jewels of language. She was a polished artist who never sacrificed her art to dreams and visions. It would, however, be wrong to think that she invariably resorted to the ornate or sophisticated style. Sarojini could be simple as well; poetic passages of extreme simplicity exist side by side with exuberant and luxuriant images and metaphors. The last stanza of "The Time of Roses" is an exemplification of the simplicity of her poetic style amidst madness of spring-festivity and love-loyalty:

Hide me in a shrine of roses,
Drown me in a wine of roses
Drawn from every fragrant grove!
Bind me on a pyre of roses,
Burn me in a fire of roses,
Crown me with the rose of Love!

(pp. 194-5).

In the same poem, the second and the third stanzas are composed in a high-strung style. It may, therefore, be safely deduced that the poetess was an adept in the use of different styles well in accord with different themes and situations.

XV. DICTION

Sarojini earned tributes from critics for her masterly poetic diction. The native idioms have not been spared. Sarojini's diction tends to be fluent and fiery, and follows the pattern of the Decadents. The poetess exploited all the poetical resources of the English language. Her lyrics usually have a refrain, which constitutes the soul of the poems. In some poems the idea is carried on to a number of stanzas. The device of contrast or comparison lends variety and strength to her poetic art. The device of repetition of ideas is made most by Sarojini in "The Poet to Death":

Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die

While yet my sweet life burgeons with its spring;
Fair is my youth, and rich the echoing boughs
Where dhadikulas sing.
Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die
with all my blossoming hopes unharvested,
My joys ungarnered, all my songs unsung,
And all my tears unshed.
Tarry a while, till I am satisfied
Of love and grief, of earth and altering sky;
Till all my human hungers are fulfilled,
O Death, I cannot die!

(p. 49).

Sarojini sometimes used uncommon words and phrases, and this generates an air of artificiality in her diction. The vocabulary is greatly influenced by the Romantic poets of the early 19th century.³³ Like Keats and Shelley, she employed a high-browed diction, which is steeped in passion, pulse, and power. Her sonorous and unusual words add to the subtlety of expression of ideas and display a keen perception of beauty.

XVI. FIGURES OF SPEECH

Sarojini's verses are ornate and embellished and abound in various figures of speech. Her similes, metaphors, and other figures of speech throw up scintillating images and make her poetry revealing.³⁴ Several striking similes are to be seen in "Palanquin-Bearers": the maiden in the palanquin sways like a flower, skims like a bird, floats like a laugh, hangs like a star, springs like a beam on the brow of the tide, falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride. "Coromandel Fishers" gives us the wind lying asleep on the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. "Indian Love-Song" presents bright parrots clustering like vermilion flowers on the ripe boughs of manycoloured fruits. In "Humayun to Zobeida", we have the beloved's heart hidden in the lover's bosom like the perfume in the petals of a rose, and the beloved haunting the lover's waking like a dream, his slumber like a moon; in "Autumn Song", the sunset hanging on a cloud like a joy on the heart of a sorrow; in "Alabastor", the heart frail as a cassia flower; in "The Queen's Rival", seven damsels round Queen Gulnaar like seven soft gems on a silken thread, like seven fair lamps in a royal town, like seven bright petals of Beauty's flower; in "The Pardah Nashin", the veiled beauty's girdle and fillet gleaming like changing fires on sunset seas, and her raiment like morning mist shot opal, gold and amethyst, and her days guarded and secure like jewels in a turbaned crest, like secrets in a lover's breast; and in "The Water Hyacinth", the hyacinth's loveliness displayed like a fatal labyrinth.

Metaphors have been abundantly used by Sarojini. Thus in "The Snake-Charmer", the snake is the subtle bride of the charmer's mellifluous wooing; in "Bangle-Sellers", the bangles are the bright rainbow-tinted circles of light in "In Praise of Gulmohur Blossoms", the lovely hue of the gulmohurs is the glimmering red of a bridal robe, and the rich red of a wild bird's wing; in "Golden Cassia", the golden cassias are the fragments of some new-fallen star or the golden lamps for a fairy shrine, or the golden pitchers for fairy wine, or the bright ankletbells from the wild.spring's feet, or the gleaming tears that some fair bride shed remembering her lost maidenhead, or the glimmering ghosts of a bygone dream; in "A Rajput Love Song", the day is a wild stallion, and the beloved wishes her lover to be a basil-wreath to twine among her tresses, a jewelled clasp of shining gold to bind around her sleeve, the keora's soul that haunts her silken raiment, a bright, vermilion tassel in the girdles that she weaves, the scented fan that lies upon her pillow, a sandal lute, or silver lamp that burns before her; in "Farewell", the poetess's songs are a bright shower of lambent butterflies, and a soft cloud of murmuring bees; in "Past and Future" the past is turned into a mountain-cell, where lone, apart, old hermitmemories dwell, and the future into a bride's marriage-veil of mysteries; and in "A Song of the Khyber Pass", the Pakhtoons are called the wolves of the mountains and the hawks of the hills.

Apart from similes and metaphors, Sarojini has employed other figures of speech too. In the poem "Suttee", the line "Shall the flesh survive when the soul is gone?" offers a fine example of synecdoche; here "flesh" (a part) is substituted for "body" (the whole). Another example of this figure of speech is to be found in "The Queen's Rival", where Queen Gulnaar's daughter is said to be "two spring times old" (spring being used for the whole year). "Suttee" also provides a pointed instance of metonymy "Shall the blossom live when the tree is dead?" In this case, "blossom" is substituted for "wife" and "tree" for "husband" by way of association. The clause "till the shadows are gray in the west" in the poem "In the Forest" is a substitution for evening and is metonymic. The Song of Princess Zeb-Un-Nissa in "Praise of Her Own Beauty" makes a nice use of oxymoron in the phrase "sweet distress". The same poem demonstrates hyperbole in the declaration of Zeb-Un-Nissa that when she lifts her veil, the roses become pale with envy of her beauty. Some other poems have direct addresses to Death, Life, Pain, Love, and the Unknown as though they were persons, and in them we have a beautiful application of personification.

XVII. PROSODY

Sarojini followed, in the main, the great English poetical tradition in matters of prosody. Her poems have "a prosodical correctness and regularity which seldom if ever becomes merely mechanical".³⁵ Sarojini was a great metrical artist with a delicate ear. She used a number of metres effectively, though one may find a few faults in scansion. She experimented with various stanza forms and matrical measures (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, and their permissible combinations). Besides their skilful handling, she also succeeded in setting them to some of the Indian tunes. She never wrote blank verse. To create a verbal rhythm, she employed several aural devices like alliteration, refrain, consonance, and assonance. She introduced anapestic feet in the middle of iambic measures and seldom erred in her melodic cadences. She had a remarkable command of her epithets. In her writings we have "a jewelled beauty of phrase, and her subtle magic of imaginative temperament that makes her illuminate by a single flash of epithet a world of new ideas and feelings".³⁶ Her metrical inventiveness is best seen in those poems where she wove vernacular cries and phrases for Indian colour:

From the threshold of the Dawn
On we wander, always on
Till the friendly light be gone
Y' Allah! Y' Allah!
We are free-born sons of Fate,
What care we for wealth or state
Or the glory of the great?
Y' Allah! Y' Allah!

("Wandering Beggars", p. 165).

The fakirs are a common sight in India, and the above poem is a living reproduction of their wandering songs.

XVIII. ORATORY

Sarojini was an acknowledged orator and a fine conversationalist. Her speeches used to be a rare combination of oration and poetry. As Sarojini became involved in the political movement of the country, she was more and more in demand on public platforms and grew into an impressive orator. It has been pointed out that, through her speeches, she "certainly received louder and more widespread applause than she ever could have received through her poetry. . ,. "³⁷ The passionate rhythmic flow of her appeals to her countrymen's patriotic conscience, her highly charged language, and the perfect modulation of her voice: these put Indians under a spell, and they fully appreciated the ennobling words falling from her mouth. Her oratory became all the more forceful because to noble language she set "a peerless regality and sincerity of spirit."³⁸ Some of her poems are rich in rhetorical effects.

XIX. SAROJINI NAIDU AND TORU DUTT

It is interesting to compare and contrast the two great Indo-Anglian poetesses Sarojini Naidu and Toru Dutt. Both chose English as the medium of their expression, and both wrote verses with beauty, ease and command. The tragedy of Toru Dutt lies in the fact of "what might have been" had she lived longer, and of Sarojini of calling a halt to her own writing at a time of maturity and immersing herself in public affairs and politics. Both the poetesses had received their education and training, at least in part, in the West, and both were polyglots, with the scale swinging in favour of Toru Dutt.

Curiously enough, both the poetesses were introduced to the literary world by Edmund Gosse. Sarojini has admitted that Gosse "first showed her the way to the Golden Threshold" of poetry. The noted English critic deserves congratulations of all Indians for his sympathetic treatment of India's poetic genius. Of Toru Dutt, Gosse said: "When the history of literature of our country comes to be written, there is sure to be a page in it dedicated to this fragile, exotic blossom of songs".³⁹ The prominent qualities of Toru's verse are its simplicity, its directness, and its sincerity. In Sarojini's poetry, however, one should not look for the artless simplicity of Toru Dutt. The fact is that Sarojini's poetry is more complex and subtle than that of Toru's.

Sarojini is more personal in her verse than Toru. The latter never strove to tell the world of her personal pains and pleasures, whereas the former did so vociferously. In the poem, "Our Casuarina Tree", Toru did pour out her inner feelings, but elsewhere she seldom mentioned the plight and tragedy of her own short life.

The attitude of the two poetesses towards Nature was also different. Toru's observation of Nature was more minute and deep than that of Sarojini's. To Toru the trees she described happened to be Indian, but to Sarojini they must be described with an oriental background. A study of Toru's "Sonnet Baugmaree" and Sarojini's "Champak Blossoms" will bear out the contrast. Sarojini never quite excelled in understanding or revealing human nature too.⁴⁰ But Toru's Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan contains many living human characters, both male and female.

A critic thinks that Sarojini's genius as contrasted with that of Toru, is "wholly native".⁴¹ It is entirely dedicated to the service of the Motherland and deeply attuned to the immemorial harmonies of the country's age-long story. Toru's genius is also native, though not wholly. Her Ancient Ballads is steeped in old Indian myths and legends and noble Hindu ideals.

In points of metrical skill and command of suggestive and melodious verse, Sarojini must be placed above Toru Dutt.⁴² Sarojini wielded a wonderful command of many and varied metrical forms. The melody and the rhythmic graces of her poetry hold us spellbound. According to a critic, "The genius of Toru Dutt is to that of Mrs Sarojini what the jasmine is to the rose the jasmine that finds its most congenial home in the East, that has got a charming simplicity and beauty of appearance, that wears the artless grace of budding maidenhood in the realm of flowers, that is full of a delicate though sweet fragrance to the rose that finds a happy home in the West as well as the East, that has a queenly pomp and pageantry of colour and beauty, that has the mellow sweetness and charm of perfect womanhood in the realm of flowers, that commands homage by its regal loveliness, that has a pervasive and powerful perfume that bears our fancies away to a world of mystic inner happiness."⁴³

XX. SAROJINI'S WEAKNESSES

Critics have pointed out certain weaknesses in Sarojini's poetry. That she should have chosen English as the language of her poetry has been regretted in certain quarters. But what she might have been, had she written in a language other than English, is simply a matter of speculation and hence a futile exercise.

A charge has been levelled against the poetess that she offered us no high thought or philosophy. If we accept the definition that poetry is musical thought, we must admit that Sarojini was only a "music-maker and a dreamer of dreams". But what we require of a poet is truth to imagination, and Sarojini fulfilled this essential requirement.⁴⁴ She could also rise to the heights of contemplation in the song "To a Buddha Seated on a Lotus". This beautiful poem gives expression to "the heavenward hunger of her soul" and her wistful longing "diviner summits to attain". It shines out of a great calm, the calm which rises superior to the weariness, the fever, and the fret of frail humanity. But this restraint is least characteristic of our poetess who, in her normal moods, remains the "hectic flamelike rose of our verse, All colour and all odour and all bloom."

Most of Sarojini's poems, opines a critic, have "a highly strung diction which sometimes smacks of artificiality." The same critic further observes: "The vocabulary used in most cases is uncommon and is greatly influenced by the Romantic Vocabulary of the early 19th century poets of England."⁴⁵ Her images and similes are usually drawn from a dream-world, and her poetry sometimes leaves the impression of being rhetorical and wordy. Her style tends to be extremely ornate and chiselled. Her faint sighs in exquisite numbers wring only temporary tears. There is an unacceptable nostalgia in her poetry, and under no conditions the poetess may be called "modern". She virtually ceased writing verses when the modernistic trends set in. She unquestionably knew some of the modernists personally and read their work with a sense of appreciation, but herself practised otherwise.⁴⁶ A close textual scrutiny of her poems is sure to reveal her vulnerability, and it is not difficult to get "a superfluous word, an inversion, an archaism, in every single poem of Sarojini' . . ."⁴⁷

XXI. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The weaknesses mentioned above should not lead readers to construe that Sarojini's poetry is mere trash; there is rather much to soothe and console them. Her love poetry is of special charm to youthful hearts. Her metrical felicity adds an additional feather to her cap. In matters of rhyme, Sarojini surpassed even some of the modern English poets. In the opinion of a critic, "Her poems have rhythms of life, as they come out direct from a vital personality." He says further: "Actualities, imagination, feeling and music are sweetly blended into an artistic form aglow with life and fire of real passion. She is a supreme artist in words, imagery and patterns, and her canvas is a whole nation. What is more, she knows the art of being artless. It is a pity that she did not give us many more of those fine-cut jewels of beauty."⁴⁸ In Sarojini's poetry one comes across yearning and dream, action and suffering, laughter and song. Rarely has the world perhaps seen women who have combined in themselves such diverse qualities: an intense poetic temperament, sensitive to beauty in all forms; a gift of language overwhelming in its richness; and vivacity and wit and oratorical eloquence.⁴⁹ Sarojini was not only an aesthete wallowing in sensation, but one who showed a certain sanity and balance and a purpose in her poetry. The range of her poetry is surely limited, but she, like Jane Austen, moved within that range with grace and skill. Her flawless and varied art has prompted a critic to remark that "no Indian woman has written so many and such perfect songs of India as Mrs Naidu".⁵⁰ Though her poetry lacks serious thought, its artistic perfection can hardly be questioned, and even Edmund Gosse has admitted that "she is the most brilliant, the most original, as well as the most correct, of all the natives of Hindustan who have written in English."⁵¹ Through her poetry, Sarojini articulated the dream of a rising nation against the imperialistic forces. In it one may witness a beautiful marriage of Western culture with Eastern idealism.⁵² One may also witness in it that widespread upheaval of thought and feeling which is likely to affect the future of mankind. It was perhaps this in Pt. Nehru's mind when he remarked that "Mrs Naidu was a great nationalist and mighty internationalist."⁵³ Like Tagore and Aurobindo, Sarojini projected an aspect of Indian sensitivity at that level of creative synthesis where tradition and individuality respond to the human predicament without any sense of hiatus. Whether about love or nature, death or dreams, life or loss, temples or dancers, festivals or fishermen, her poems reveal her own awareness of the distinct connection between the self and the world. Whatever the theme and mood of her poem, Sarojini remains mainly a "songbird" twittering melodiously in the Muse's bower.

NOTES

¹ Symons, "Introduction," The Golden Threshold, pp. 9-10.

²Ibid., p. 10.

³Ibid., p. 21.

⁴ Gosse, "Introduction," The Bird of Time, p, 8.

⁵ Symons, "Introduction," p. 10.

⁶ K. Vishwanathan, "The Nightingale and the Naughty Gal," The Banasthali Patrika, No. 12 (January 1969), p. 127.

⁷ Dustoor, Sarojini Naidu, p. 47.

⁸ B.S. Mathur, "Sarojini Naidu: A Singer of Beautiful Songs," The Calcutta Review (August 1949), pp. 115-116.

⁹ Cousins, "The Poetry of Sarojini Naidu: A Critical Appreciation," The Modern Review, p. 414.

¹⁰Mrs Sarojini Naidu, 2nd ed. (Madras, 1917), p. 21.

¹¹ Cousins, "The Poetry of Sarojini Naidu: A Critical Appreciation," The Modern Review, p. 414.

¹² Punekar, "A Note on Sarojini Naidu," Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English, p. 77.

¹³ Diwan Chand Sharma, "Sarojini Naidu," The Modern Review (December 1949), p. 479.

¹⁴Ibid., p. 481.

¹⁵ S. Sivaraman, "The Philosophy of Mrs. Sarojini Naidu's Poetry," The Calcutta Review (November-December 1932), p. 261.

¹⁶ Jha, "The Poetry of Sarojini Naidu," The Hindustan Review, p. 208.

¹⁷ Sivaraman, "The Philosophy of Mrs Sarojini Naidu's Poetry," The Calcutta Review, p. 270.

¹⁸ Mathur, "Sarojini Naidu: A Singer of Beautiful Songs," The Calcutta Review, p. 116.

¹⁹ Sengupta, Sarojini Naidu, p. 85.

²⁰Ibid., p. 89.

²¹ Sahib Singh Ahuja, "The Humour of Mrs Sarojini Naidu," The Modern Review (February 1962), p. 151. A Similar observation has also been made by Prof. K.K. Bhattacharya "She had a great fund of wit and humour and sparkled with repartees and sallies. Dullness and Sarojini were strangers. She would shine wherever she would be, and magnetize the men and women she came across and make them her friends." See his article "Sarojini Naidu, the Greatest Woman of Our Time." The Modern Review (April 1949), p. 290.

²² Brailsford, "Mrs Naidu: A Great Human Being," The Hindustan Review, p. 212.

²³ Quoted from Symons, "Introduction," The Golden Threshold, p. 20.

²⁴ Turnbull, "Introduction," Sarojini Naidu: Select Poems, p. 23.

²⁵Ibid., pp. 22-23.

²⁶ Gosse, "Introduction," The Bird of Time, p. 6.

²⁷ S.V. Mukerjea," "The Art of Sarojini Naidu, Disjecta Membra: Studies in Literature and Life (Bangalore, 1959), p. 23.

²⁸ Gosse, "Introduction," The Bird of Time, p. 5.

²⁹Mrs Sarojini Naidu, p. 27.

³⁰ Sengupta, Sarojini Naidu, p. 96.

³¹ Gupta, Sarojini: The Poetess, p. 94.

³² Symons, "Introduction," The Golden Threshold, p. 9.

³³ A.N. Gupta and Satish Gupta, Sarojini Naidu: Select Poems (Bareilly, 1976), p. 52.

³⁴ Gupta, Sarojini: The Poetess, p. 127.

³⁵ Turnbull, "Introduction," Sarojini Naidu: Select Poems, p. 30.

³⁶Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, p. XVIII.

³⁷ A. Bose, "Sarojini Naidu," The Literary Criterion, II. No. 3 (Winter 1955), 7. In an exaggerated tone, Prof, K.K. Bhattacharya says: "As an orator she has perhaps no equals in any land. Words danced out of her lips in perfect rhythm . . . investing the theme she would speak on with sanctity and nobility breathing intense patriotism." "Sarojini Naidu, the Greatest Woman of Our Time," The Modern Review (April 1949), pp. 249-250.

³⁸ Bose, "Sarojini Naidu," The Literary Criterion, p. 8.

³⁹ Edmund Gosse, "Introductory Memoir," Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (London, 1882), p. XXVII.

⁴⁰ Sengupta, Sarojini Naidu, p. 96.

⁴¹ Mukerjea, "The Art of Sarojini Naidu", Disjecta Membra, p. 22.

⁴²Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, p. 19.

⁴³Ibid., pp. 19-20.

⁴⁴ S. Narayanan, "Some Sarojini Naidu's Poems", The Hindustan Review LXXXII (April 1949), 215.

⁴⁵ R. Bhatnagar, Sarojini Naidu: The Poet of a Nation, p. 50.

⁴⁶ H. H. Anniah Gowda, "Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu as Poets", The Literary Half-Yearly, IX, No. 1, 30.

⁴⁷ Punekar, "A Note on Sarojini Naidu", Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English, p. 81.

⁴⁸ Bhatnagar, Sarojini Naidu: The Poet of a Nation, pp. 55-56

⁴⁹ K. K. Mehrotra, "The Poetry of Sarojini Naidu", Essays and Studies (Allahabad, 1970), p. 76.

⁵⁰Ibid., p. 88.

⁵¹ Gosse, "Introduction," The Bird of Time, p. 2.

⁵² Mukerjea, "The Art of Sarojini Naidu", Disjecta Membra, p. 38.

⁵³ Nehru, "Sarojini Naidu: A Tribute in India's Parliament," The Hindustan Review, p. 205.