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.' And, in another letter, she writes: '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.' It is for this bird-like quality of song, it
seems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint, in a sort of
delicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament of a
woman of the East, finding expression through a Western language and
under partly Western influences. They do not express 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 descended from the ancient
family of Chattorajes of Bhramangram, who were noted throughout Eastern
Bengal as patrons of Sanskrit learning, and for their practice of Yoga.
He took his degree of Doctor of Science at the University of Edinburgh
in 1877, and afterwards studied brilliantly at Bonn. On his return to
India he founded the 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 family, all of whom were taught
English at an early age. 'I,' she writes, 'was stubborn and refused to
speak it. So one day, when I was nine years old, my father punished
me--the only time I was ever punished--by shutting me in a room alone
for a whole day. I came out of it a full-blown linguist. I have never
spoken any other language to him, or to my mother, who always speaks to
me in Hindustani. I don't think I had any special hankering to write
poetry as a little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy
nature. My training under my father's eye was of a sternly scientific
character. He was determined that I should be a great mathematician or a
scientist, but the poetic instinct, which I inherited from him and also
from my mother (who wrote some lovely Bengali lyrics in her youth),
proved stronger. One day, when I was