The Sailor

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



The boat of the boatman Madhu is moored at the wharf of Rajgunj.
    It is uselessly laden with jute, and has been lying there idle
for ever so long.
    If he would only lend me his boat, I should man her with a
hundred oars, and hoist sails, five or six or seven.
    I should never steer her to stupid markets.
    I should sail the seven seas and the thirteen rivers of
fairyland.
    But, mother, you won't weep for me in a corner.
    I am not going into the forest like Ramachandra to come back
only after fourteen years.
    I shall become the prince of the story, and fill my boat with
whatever I like.
    I shall take my friend Ashu with me. We shall sail merrily
across the ever seas and the thirteen rivers of fairyland.
    We shall set sail in the early morning light.
    When at noontide you are bathing at the pond, we shall be in
the land of a strange king.
    We shall pass the ford of Tirpurni, and leave behind us the
desert of Tepantar.
    When we come back it will be getting dark, and I shall tell
you of all that we have seen.
    I shall cross the seven seas and the thirteen rivers of
fairyland.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

1:04 min read
500

Quick analysis:

Scheme abcdefgHijklmnhopqdirsgH
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,110
Words 214
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24

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…

All Rabindranath Tagore poems | Rabindranath Tagore Books

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