"
In other passages, of course, the text reads like a translation from
some stirring ballad, and we feel that it gives but a faint and
discordant echo of the music welling in Toru's brain. For it must
frankly be confessed that in the brief May-day of her existence she had
not time to master our language as Blanco White did, or as Chamisso
mastered German. To the end of her days, fluent and graceful as she was,
she was not entirely conversant with English, especially with the
colloquial turns of modern speech. Often a very fine thought is spoiled
for hypercritical ears by the queer turn of expression which she has
innocently given to it. These faults are found to a much smaller degree
in her miscellaneous poems. Her sonnets seem to me to be of great
beauty, and her longer piece, entitled "Our Casuarina Tree," needs no
apology for its rich and mellifluous numbers.
It is difficult to exaggerate when we try to estimate what we have lost
in the premature death of Toru Dutt. Literature has no honors which need
have been beyond the grasp of a girl who at the age of twenty-one, and
in languages separated from her own by so deep a chasm, had produced so
much of lasting worth.
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