In its lightness and grace, this poem is one of the exquisite things in our language: one of the little lyric flights, like William Watson's "April," which in their clear sweetness and apparent spontaneity are like some small bird's song. Mrs Naidu has said of herself—"I sing just as the birds do"; and as regards her loveliest lyrics (there are a fair proportion of them) she speaks a larger truth than she meant. Their simplicity and abandonment to the sheer joy of singing are infinitely refreshing; and fragile though they seem, one suspects them of great vitality. In the later volume there is another called "Golden Cassia"—the bright blooms that her people call mere 'woodland flowers.' The poet has other fancies about them; sometimes they seem to her like fragments of a fallen star—
Or golden lamps for a fairy shrine,
Or golden pitchers for fairy wine.
Perchance you are, O frail and sweet!
Bright anklet-bells from the wild spring's feet,
Or the gleaming tears that some fair bride shed
Remembering her lost maidenhead.
The tenderness and delicacy of verse like that might mislead us. We might suppose that the qualities of Mrs Naidu's work were only those which are arbitrarily known as feminine. But this poet, like Mrs Browning, is faithful to her own sensuous and passionate temperament. She has not timidly sheltered behind a convention which, because some women-poets have been austere, prescribes austerity, neutral tones, and a pale light for the woman-artist in this sphere. And, as a result, we have all the evidence of a richly-dowered sensibility responding frankly to the vivid light and colour, the liberal contours and rich scents and great spaces of the world she loves; and responding no less warmly and freely to human instincts. Occasionally her verse achieves the expression of sheer sensuous ecstasy. It does that, perhaps, in the two Dance poems—from the very reason that her art is so true and free. The theme requires exactly that treatment; and in "Indian Dancers" there is besides a curiously successful union between the measure that is employed and the subject of the poem—
Their glittering garments of purple are burning like tremulous dawns in
the quivering air,
And exquisite, subtle and slow are the tinkle and tread of their
rhythmical, slumber-soft feet.
The love-songs, though in many moods, are always the frank expression of emotion that is deep and strong. One that is especially beautiful is the utterance of a young girl who, while her sisters prepare the rites for a religious festival, stands aside with folded hands dreaming of her lover. She is secretly asking herself what need has she to supplicate the gods, being blessed by love; and again, in the couple of stanzas called "Ecstasy," the rapture has passed, by its very intensity, into pain.
Shelter my soul, O my love!
My soul is bent low with the pain
And the burden of love, like the grace
Of a flower that is smitten with rain:
O shelter my soul from thy face!