Analysis of The Gift

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



I want to give you something, my child, for we are drifting in the
stream of the world.
    Our lives will be carried apart, and our love forgotten.
    But I am not so foolish as to hope that I could buy your heart
with my gifts.
    Young is your life, your path long, and you drink the love we
bring you at one draught and turn and run away from us.
    You have your play and your playmates. What harm is there if
you have no time or thought for us!
    We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age to count the days
that are past, to cherish in our hearts what our hands have lost
for ever.
    The river runs swift with a song, breaking through all
barriers. But the mountain stays and remembers, and follows her
with his love.


Scheme ABCDEFGHGIJKLKM
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110111111000 1101 1011110010101010 1111110111111111 111 1111111011011 1111101010111 111101111111 11111111 101110010111101 1111100101110111 110 010111011011 1001010100100100 111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 725
Words 143
Sentences 10
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 15
Lines Amount 15
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 548
Words per stanza (avg) 141
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

42 sec read
268

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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