The Gardener 1
SERVANT. Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!
QUEEN. The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why doyou come at this late hour?
SERVANT. When you have finished with others, that is my time.I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.
QUEEN. What can you expect when it is too late?
SERVANT. Make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN. What folly is this?
SERVANT. I will give up my other work.I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send meto distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests. But makeme the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN. What will your duties be?
SERVANT. The service of your idle days.I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning,where your feet will be greeted with praise at every step by theflowers eager for death.I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna,where the early evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirtthrough the leaves.I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by yourbedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron pastein wondrous designs.
QUEEN. What will you have for your reward?
SERVANT. To be allowed to hold your little fists like tenderlotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge thesoles of your feet with the red juice of ashoka petals and kissaway the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.
QUEEN. Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be thegardener of my flower garden.
Words in this poem
- expect v. t.
- To wait for; to await. [L. expectatum, to look out for, await, expect; ex + out spectare to look at. See Spectacle.]
- gardener n.
- One who makes and tends a garden; a horticulturist.
- replenish v. i.
- To recover former fullness.
- bedside n.
- The side of a bed.
- footstool n.
- A low stool to support the feet of one when sitting.
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Gardener 1 is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Gardener, translated by the author from the original Bengali (Macmillan, London and New York, 1913; this text the 1915 printing), Project Gutenberg ebook #6686; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener 1, in The Gardener (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6686, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tagore-gardener/poem-1.html, id L27637.
About this section
The Gardener 1 is prose, printed in 12 paragraphs. It is part of the edition and is kept for reading, but nothing here is measured: the line breaks are the printer's, so no metre, rhyme scheme or scansion is stated.
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