Paper Boats

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.
    In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of
the village where I live.
    I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and
know who I am.
    I load my little boats with shiuli flower from our garden, and
hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried safely to land
in the night.
    I launch my paper boats and look up into the sky and see the
little clouds setting thee white bulging sails.
    I know not what playmate of mine in the sky sends them down
the air to race with my boats!
    When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my
paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars.
    The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading ins
their baskets full of dreams.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

48 sec read
416

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFEGHIJKLMNOP
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 800
Words 162
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 17

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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