The Gardener

Translated by the author
from the original Bengali in
1915.

To

W. B. Yeats

Preface

Most of the lyrics of love and life, the translations of which
from Bengali are published in this book, were written much
earlier than the series of religious poems contained in the book
named Gitanjali. The translations are not always literal--
the originals being sometimes abridged and sometimes
paraphrased.

Rabindranath Tagore.

1

SERVANT. Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!

QUEEN. The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why
do you 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
me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests.
But make me 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
the flowers 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 skirt through the leaves.
I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your
bedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron
paste in wondrous designs.

QUEEN. What will you have for your reward?

SERVANT. To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender
lotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge
the soles of your feet with the red juice of _ashoka_
petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to
linger there.

QUEEN. Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be the
gardener of my flower garden.

2

"Ah, poet, the evening draws near; your hair is turning grey.
"Do you in your lonely musing hear the message of the hereafter?"

"It is evening," the poet said, "and I am listening because some
one may call from the village, late though it be.
"I watch if young straying hearts meet together, and two pairs of
eager eyes beg for music to break their silence and speak for
them.
"Who is there to weave their passionate songs, if I sit on the
shore of life and contemplate death and the beyond?

"The early evening star disappears.
"The glow of a funeral pyre slowly dies by the