Analysis of From Afar

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



The 'I' that floats along the wave of time,
From a distance I watch him.
With the dust and the water,
With the fruit and the flower,
With the All he is rushing forward.
He is always on the surface,
Tossed by the waves and dancing to the rhythm
Of joy and suffering.
The least loss makes him suffer,
The least wound hurts him--
Him I see from afar.
That 'I' is not my real self;
I am still within myself,
I do not float in the stream of death.
I am free, I am desireless,
I am peace, I am illumined--
Him I see from afar.


Scheme abccdefgcbHiijekH
Poetic Form
Metre 0111010111 1010111 1010010 1010010 101111010 1111010 11010101010 110100 0111110 01111 111101 1111111 111011 111100111 111111 11111010 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 528
Words 109
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 17
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 390
Words per stanza (avg) 107
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 30, 2023

32 sec read
120

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore FRAS was an Indian polymath—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. more…

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