Analysis of The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside
Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)
She dwelt on the hillside by edge
of a maize-field, near the spring that
flows in laughing rills through the
solemn shadows of ancient trees. The
women came there to fill their jars,
and travellers would sit there to rest
and talk. She worked and dreamed
daily to the tune of the bubbling
stream.
One evening the stranger came down
from the cloud-hidden peak; his locks
were tangled like drowsy snakes. We
asked in wonder, "Who are you?"
He answered not but sat by the
garrulous stream and silently gazed at
the hut where she dwelt. Our hearts
quaked in fear and we came back home
when it was night.
Next morning when the women
came to fetch water at the spring by
the deodar trees, they found the doors
open in her hut, but her voice was gone
and where was her smiling face?
The empty jar lay on the floor and her
lamp had burnt itself out in the
corner. No one knew where she had
fled to before it was morning--and the
stranger had gone.
In the month of May the sun grew
strong and the snow melted, and we
sat by the spring and wept. We
wondered in our mind, "Is there a
spring in the land where she has gone
and where she can fill her vessel in
these hot thirsty days?" And we
asked each other in dismay, "Is there
a land beyond these hills where we
live?"
It was a summer night; the breeze
blew from the south; and I sat in her
deserted room where the lamp stood
still unlit. When suddenly from
before my eyes the hills vanished like
curtains drawn aside. "Ah, it is
she who comes. How are you, my
child? Are you happy? But where
can you shelter under this open sky?
And, alas! our spring is not here to
allay your thirst."
"Here is the same sky," she said,
"only free from the fencing hills,--
this is the same stream grown into a
river,--the same earth widened into
a plain." "Everything is here," I
sighed, "only we are not." She
smiled sadly and said, "You are in
my heart." I woke up and heard the
babbling of the stream and the rustling
of the deodars at night.
Scheme | ABCCDEFGHIJKLCBMNOPQRSTUCVCSLKKCSWKXKYZU1 2 3 4 QXQL5 6 7 CLQKWCGO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110111 10111011 1010110 10111010 10111111 010011111 011101 1010110100 1 11001011 10110111 01011011 1010111 11011110 1001010011 01111101 10101111 1111 1101010 111101011 0111101 1000110111 0110101 0101110100 11101100 10111111 1101111000 1011 00111011 10011001 1101011 100101110 10011111 011110100 1110101 111000111 01011111 1 11010101 110101100 01011011 1111001 011101101 10101111 1111111 1111011 1110101101 0011011111 0111 1101111 10110101 110111010 100111001 0110111 1101111 11001110 11111010 1001010010 10111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,945 |
Words | 393 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 59 |
Lines Amount | 59 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,520 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 380 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:55 min read
- 176 Views
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"The Gardener LXXXIII: She Dwelt on the Hillside" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29568/the-gardener-lxxxiii%3A-she-dwelt-on-the-hillside>.
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