Sarojini was the eldest of a large family, all of whom were taught English at an early age. 'I,' she writes, 'was stubborn and refused to speak it. So one day, when I was nine years old, my father punished me--the only time I was ever punished--by shutting me in a room alone for a whole day. I came out of it a full-blown linguist. I have never spoken any other language to him, or to my mother, who always speaks to me in Hindustani. I don't think I had any special hankering to write poetry as a little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy nature. My training under my father's eye was of a sternly scientific character. He was determined that I should be a great mathematician or a scientist, but the poetic instinct, which I inherited from him and also from my mother (who wrote some lovely Bengali lyrics in her youth), proved stronger. One day, when I was eleven, I was sighing over a sum in algebra; it _wouldn't_ come right; but instead a whole poem came to me suddenly. I wrote it down. 'From that day my "poetic career" began. At thirteen I wrote a long poem _a la_ "Lady of the Lake"--1300 lines in six days. At thirteen I wrote a drama of 2000 lines, a full-fledged passionate thing that I began on the spur of the moment, without forethought, just to spite my doctor, who said I was very ill and must not touch a book. My health broke down permanently about this time, and, my regular studies being stopped, I read voraciously. I suppose the greater part of my reading was done between fourteen and sixteen. I wrote a novel, I wrote fat volumes of journals: I took myself very seriously in those days.' Before she was fifteen the great struggle of her life began. Dr. Govindurajulu Naidu, now her husband, is, though of an old and honourable family, not a Brahmin. The difference of caste roused an equal opposition, not only on the side of her family, but of his; and in 1895 she was sent to England, against her will, with a special scholarship from the Nizam. She remained in England, with an interval of travel in Italy, till 1898, studying first at King's College, London, then, till her health again broke down, at Girton. She returned to Hyderabad in September 1898, and in the December of that year, to the scandal of all India, broke through the bonds of caste, and married Dr. Naidu. 'Do you know I have some very beautiful poems floating in the air,' she wrote to me in 1904; 'and if the gods are kind I shall cast my soul like a net and capture them, this year. If the gods are kind--and grant me a little measure of health. It is all I need to make my life perfect, for the very "Spirit of Delight" that Shelley wrote of dwells in my little home; it is full of the music of birds in the garden and children in the long-arched verandah.' There are songs about the children in this book; they are called the Lord of Battles, the Sun of Victory, the Lotus-born, and the Jewel of Delight.