god of
wealth.

[44] According to the mythical geography of the Hindoos the earth
consisted of seven islands surrounded by seven seas.

BALLADS OF HINDOSTAN

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

BY

TORU DUTT

INTRODUCTION

If Toru Dutt were alive, she would still be younger than any recognized
European writer, and yet her fame, which is already considerable, has
been entirely posthumous. Within the brief space of four years which now
divides us from the date of her decease, her genius has been revealed to
the world under many phases, and has been recognized throughout France
and England. Her name, at least, is no longer unfamiliar in the ear of
any well-read man or woman. But at the hour of her death she had
published but one book, and that book had found but two reviewers in
Europe. One of these, M. Andre Theuriet, the well-known poet and
novelist, gave the "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" adequate praise in
the "Revue des Deux Mondes"; but the other, the writer of the present
notice, has a melancholy satisfaction in having been a little earlier
still in sounding the only note of welcome which reached the dying
poetess from England. It was while Professor W. Minto was editor of the
"Examiner," that one day in August, 1876, in the very heart of the dead
season for books, I happened to be in the office of that newspaper, and
was upbraiding the whole body of publishers for issuing no books worth
reviewing. At that moment the postman brought in a thin and sallow
packet with a wonderful Indian postmark on it, and containing a most
unattractive orange pamphlet of verse, printed at Bhowanipore, and
entitled "A Sheaf gleaned in French Fields, by Toru Dutt." This shabby
little book of some two hundred pages, without preface or introduction,
seemed specially destined by its particular providence to find its way
hastily into the waste-paper basket. I remember that Mr. Minto thrust it
into my unwilling hands, and said "There! see whether you can't make
something of that." A hopeless volume it seemed, with its queer type,
published at Bhowanipore, printed at the Saptahiksambad Press! But when
at last I took it out of my pocket, what was my surprise and almost
rapture to open at such verse as this:--

"Still barred thy doors! The far East glows,
The morning wind blows fresh and free.
Should not the hour that wakes the rose
Awaken also thee?

"All look for thee, Love, Light, and Song,