SOURCE: "Sarojini's Art," in Sarojini: The Poetess, Doaba House Publishers, 1975, pp. 120-135.

In the following essay, Gupta discusses the influence of English Romanticism on Naidu's work.

Introductory Remarks

One cannot miss in Sarojini's poetry her ease in the English language, her sense of the sounds of English words, and her mastery over the metrical system of English poetry.

Although her life spans across the late Victorian, Decadent, Edwardian and Georgian, and the Hulme-Eliot-Pound, and the Yeatsean, and the Auden-Spender, and the avant garde free verse periods of English poetry, Sarojini, born and brought up in the Romantic tradition, fed on Romantic poetry, tutored by Romantic critics Gosse and Symons, ever remained Romantic, both in her sensibility and art. One could take it as her virtue, or as her defect, according to one's own inclination.

And so, she would never take to free verse; and as to diction, the...