SOURCE: "The Poetry of Sarojini Naidu," in Indo-English Literature: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by K. K. Sharma, Vimal Prakashan, 1977, pp. 61-70.

In the following essay, Ansari presents an overview of Naidu's poetry.

"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". This statement of Sarojini Naidu should be examined carefully before it is accepted as a judicious judgment on her poetry. No critical criterion can pronounce any one of her poems as "full of beauty and the spirit of greatness" if we use these words in the same sense in which they are applicable to the poetry of Keats and Shelley, let...