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Title: The Golden Threshold

Author: Sarojini Naidu

Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #680]
Release Date: October, 1996

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD ***




Produced by Judith Boss.









THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD


BY

SAROJINI NAIDU



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ARTHUR SYMONS





DEDICATED TO EDMUND GOSSE WHO FIRST SHOWED ME THE WAY TO THE
GOLDEN THRESHOLD

London, 1896 Hyderabad, 1905



CONTENTS

FOLK SONGS

Palanquin-Bearers
Wandering Singers
Indian Weavers
Coromandel Fishers
The Snake-Charmer
Corn-Grinders
Village-Song
In Praise of Henna
Harvest Hymn
Indian Love-Song
Cradle-Song
Suttee

SONGS FOR MUSIC

Song of a Dream
Humayun to Zobeida
Autumn Song Alabaster
Ecstasy
To my Fairy Fancies

POEMS

Ode to H. H. the Nizam of Hyderabad
In the Forest
Past and Future Life
The Poet's Love-Song
To the God of Pain
The Song of Princess Zeb-un-nissa
Indian Dancers
My Dead Dream
Damayante to Nala in the Hour of Exile
The Queen's Rival
The Poet to Death
The Indian Gipsy
To my Children
The Pardah Nashin
To Youth
Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad
Street Cries
To India
The Royal Tombs of Golconda
To a Buddha seated on a Lotus



INTRODUCTION

It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. The
earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the
writer was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India
in 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think,
almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to have
an individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to be
published. The writer hesitated. "Your letter made me very
proud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it 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.
THE GOLDEN THRESHOLD


BY

SAROJINI NAIDU



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ARTHUR SYMONS





DEDICATED TO EDMUND GOSSE WHO FIRST SHOWED ME THE WAY TO THE
GOLDEN THRESHOLD

London, 1896 Hyderabad, 1905



CONTENTS

FOLK SONGS

Palanquin-Bearers
Wandering Singers
Indian Weavers
Coromandel Fishers
The Snake-Charmer
Corn-Grinders
Village-Song
In Praise of Henna
Harvest Hymn
Indian Love-Song
Cradle-Song
Suttee

SONGS FOR MUSIC

Song of a Dream
Humayun to Zobeida
Autumn Song Alabaster
Ecstasy
To my Fairy Fancies

POEMS

Ode to H. H. the Nizam of Hyderabad
In the Forest
Past and Future Life
The Poet's Love-Song
To the God of Pain
The Song of Princess Zeb-un-nissa
Indian Dancers
My Dead Dream
Damayante to Nala in the Hour of Exile
The Queen's Rival
The Poet to Death
The Indian Gipsy
To my Children
The Pardah Nashin
To Youth
Nightfall in the City of Hyderabad
Street Cries
To India
The Royal Tombs of Golconda
To a Buddha seated on a Lotus



INTRODUCTION

It is at my persuasion that these poems are now published. The
earliest of them were read to me in London in 1896, when the
writer was seventeen; the later ones were sent to me from India
in 1904, when she was twenty-five; and they belong, I think,
almost wholly to those two periods. As they seemed to me to have
an individual beauty of their own, I thought they ought to be
published. The writer hesitated. "Your letter made me very
proud and very sad," she wrote. "Is it 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.