“The poems are all concerned with elementary passions. The lament of Yasmini, the dancinggirl, for the lover who was unlike all the others; the playing of Khristna on his flute; the laments of a young bride who is sold to an old King, and of the Queen who is displaced in the zenana by a younger rival: the song of the Camping-ground, which is the heart of India; the story of how Sher Afzul revenged himself on the mistress who had slain his friend; the plaint of the dying Prince who must leave his great possessions.... The finest, to our mind, is ‘Yasin Khan,’ the story of the yearning which overtakes a King who has found his kingdom for the fierce hunted days when he was still in pursuit of it.”—Spec.
“The stamp of her individuality is on all her work, so indelibly that whether it be translated or direct becomes a matter of small importance. Something of the spontaneity and music of the earlier books is missing, and neither her theme nor its expression was of the kind to gain by a more ordered and deliberate method.”
+ + – Acad. 69: 802. Ag. 5, ’05. 1190w.
“These poems are of a piece with the former work of the author of ‘The garden of Kama’ and ‘Stars of the Desert.’ In this last book the passion is beginning to seem forced, the colour is fading.”
+ – Ath. 1905, 2: 299. S. 2. 260w.
“Here, we may claim, if anywhere in our modern day, was the true inheritor of the Sapphic fervor, of the Sapphic song,—and, shall we not add, of the Sapphic catastrophe?” Edith M. Thomas.
+ + Critic. 48: 184. F. ’06. 410w.
“Here is character and force enough, of surprise something, of beauty nothing, of suggestion, or (shall we say?) of the suggestive too much. It is force misapplied, character muddied at the source.”
– + Lond. Times. 4: 267. Ag. 25, ’05. 140w.