Anthology of modern Indian poetry

The Wisdom of the East Series Edited by L. CRANMER-BYNG Dr. S. A. KAPADIA
ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN INDIAN POETRY All Rights Reserved
WISDOM OF THE EAST
EDITED BY GWENDOLINE GOODWIN
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W First Edition, 1927 Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

Francis Bacon it was who said, “Prefaces are great wastes of time, and tho’ they seem to proceed of modesty, they are bravery.” It is necessary, however, in the present instance to make a stand against the somewhat sweeping convictions of the Elizabethan master. The call of Youth in India is a hot young call, trumpeting down the ages through a maze of polytheistic tribute, and emerging in the twentieth century with some of its original clearness of sound drowned by a Gargantuan thunder of Western drums. The Indian poet of to-day is torn, like the Indian painter, between admiration for Western models and a desire to mould himself thereon, and an inherent Indian tradition that runs in his veins and will not be denied. Indeed, it is pity to deny it. Sir Edmund Gosse persuaded Sarojini Naidu to tear up her poems about English life and to write of her own Indian bazaars and cities, villages and festivals, for which persuasion we are indeed indebted to Sir Edmund. We of the West do not want from the East poetic edifices built upon a foundation of Yeats and Shelley and Walt Whitman. We want genuine Taj Mahals and Juma Masjids, cameos of rural sweetness and the hopes of faithful hearts. We want to hear the flute of Krishna as Radha heard it, to fall under the spell of the blue god “in the lotus-heart of dreams.” For there is much to learn from the melody of Eastern thought. It is, perhaps, a minor melody born of the mating of Love and Death, but it has its seed in an innate spiritual rapture that no Western veneer can wholly cover.
In the bulk of Indian poetry religious feeling predominates, as is only natural in a country of many but steadfast faiths.