at account meeting with obloquy
from her own people. She is evidently a highly cultivated lady,
knowing English perfectly. But though she has lived in England, and
travelled much, there is nothing to indicate that she has been touched
in any way by Christianity. She has had, therefore, only Hinduism from
which to get poetic thoughts connected with religion. She is evidently
a true poet, and if there had been anything in the religion capable of
suggesting poetic ideas she would have certainly found it. She has
undoubtedly a mind of great refinement, so that all that is otherwise
in connection with Hinduism has to be eliminated from the field in
which she could gather poetic thought. What, then, is the result?
While there is a distinct charm in the rhythm of her verses, their
utter emptiness makes them of no real value. The only poem, curiously
enough, in which a deeper note is struck is when she describes the
four kinds of religion which flourish under the kindly rule of H.H.
the Nizam of Hyderabad: the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the Parsee, and the
Christian. The verse is as follows:--

"The votaries of the Prophet's faith,
Of whom you are the crown and chief;
And they who bear on Vedic brows
Their mystic symbols of belief;
And they who worshipping the sun,
Fled o'er the old Iranian sea;
And they who bow to Him who trod
The midnight waves of Galilee."

Each religion is happily touched with a delicate hand. To get a
suitable idea concerning each into a couple of lines of real poetry
shows a gifted mind, and the two last lines are specially happy. (The
capital letter in the pronoun is so printed in the book.) Her mind
coming thus into brief contact with higher and truer things, she rises
in the concluding verse to a kind of benediction on this beneficent
Mohammedan ruler, which almost approaches the nature of a prayer:--

"God give you joy, God give you grace,
To shield the truth and smite the wrong,
To honour Virtue, Valour, Worth,
To cherish faith and foster song.
Your name within a nation's prayer,
Your music on a nation's tongue."

The only other poem which rises above the mere commonplace is that in
which Queen Gulnaar expresses the unsatisfied condition of her heart
because she has no rival to her beauty, and with none to envy, life
has no savour. Although seven beautiful brides are sent for and
brought before her, she remains without