The Gardener 64
I spent my day on the scorching hot dust of the road.Now, in the cool of the evening, I knock at the door of the inn.It is deserted and in ruins.A grim ashath tree spreads its hungry clutching roots through thegaping fissures of the walls.
Days have been when wayfarers came here to wash their weary feet.They spread their mats in the courtyard in the dim light of theearly moon, and sat and talked of strange lands.They work refreshed in the morning when birds made them glad, andfriendly flowers nodded their heads at them from the wayside.
But no lighted lamp awaited me when I came here.The black smudges of smoke left by many a forgotten evening lampstare, like blind eyes, from the wall.Fireflies flit in the bush near the dried-up pond, and bamboobranches fling their shadows on the grass-grown path.I am the guest of no one at the end of my day.The long night is before me, and I am tired.
Words in this poem
- scorching a.
- Burning; parching or shriveling with heat.
- wayside n.
- The side of the way; the edge or border of a road or path.
- flit a.
- Nimble; quick; swift. See Fleet.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Gardener 64 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 64, in The Gardener (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6686, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tagore-gardener/poem-64.html, id L27700.
About this section
The Gardener 64 is prose, printed in 3 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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