No modern Oriental has given us so
strange an insight into the conscience of the Asiatic as is presented in
the story of "Prehiad," or so quaint a piece of religious fancy as the
ballad of "Jogadhya Uma." The poetess seems in these verses to be
chanting to herself those songs of her mother's race to which she always
turned with tears of pleasure. They breathe a Vedic solemnity and
simplicity of temper, and are singularly devoid of that littleness and
frivolity which seem, if we may judge by a slight experience, to be the
bane of modern India.
As to the merely technical character of these poems, it may be suggested
that in spite of much in them that is rough and inchoate, they show that
Toru was advancing in her mastery of English verse. Such a stanza as
this, selected out of many no less skilful, could hardly be recognized
as the work of one by whom the language was a late acquirement:--
"What glorious trees! The sombre saul,
On which the eye delights to rest--
The betel-nut, a pillar tall,
With feathery branches for a crest--
The light-leaved tamarind spreading wide--
The pale faint-scented bitter neem,
The seemul, gorgeous as a bride,
With flowers that have the ruby's gleam.
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