An abundance of similes and metaphors regarding Nature, and exquisite touches of suggestion, are to be found in the Puṛanaanuuru and Patiṛṛuppattu.Some of the poems in the former collection may be easily classed among some of the best of Nature poetry in world literature. But the poetry of the Akam collections introduces, in addition, an outlook which is foreign to other literatures. It has been the object of writers like Humboldt, Ruskin, Biese and Palgrave to regard the ancient and modern world, when looked at from the standpoint of the poetic interpretation of Nature, as “one great confederation”. Though the study of ancient Tamil literature confirms this view in a general way, it also shows that in a corner of Peninsular India, a people developed an interpretation of Nature the like of which was not conceived on the plains watered by the Ganges, or on the banks of the Nile or the Tiber, or on the shores of the Aegean Sea.

The Kali odes, so-called because of the Kali metre employed in their composition, are extremely rich in figures of speech and in a keen observation of Nature. They contain apostrophes supposed to be made by lovers to such objects as the cloud, the wind, the moon and the sea, but the most precious part of the poems of the anthology are the highly artistic expressions of feminine love sentiment. The Paripaaṭal,another anthology consisting of long odes of a special metre and meant to be sung to the accompaniment of stringed instruments, consists partly of devotional odes to Murukan and Tirumaal, and partly of poems exclusively on the Vaiyai river and the water-sports connected with the festival celebrated around its annual freshes after the monsoon rains. The natural scenery in which the religious shrines are located are praised in a devotee’s language of love and rapture in the devotional odes, while the odes on the Vaiyai contain abundant descriptions of the birth of the river, and its rapid and sometimes devastating progress amidst scenes of natural loveliness. They contain also protestations of almost a human affection on the part of the poets for the river that confers beauty, fertility and prosperity to the city and the kingdom of Maturai.

The other four books are anthologies of love poems, alike in subject and metre, but different only in length. The Neṭuntokai