The Gardener LXXVI: The Fair Was On

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



The fair was on before the temple.
It had rained from the early morning
and the day came to its end.
    Brighter than all the gladness of
the crowd was the bright smile of
a girl who bought for a farthing a
whistle of palm leaf.
    The shrill joy of that whistle floated
above all laughter and noise.
    An endless throng of people came
and jostled together. The road was
muddy, the river in flood, the field
under water in ceaseless rain.
    Greater than all the troubles of
the crowd was a little boy's trouble--
he had not a farthing to buy a painted
stick.
    His wistful eyes gazing at the shop
made this whole meeting of men so
pitiful.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
81

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDDEFGHIJKLDAGMNOA
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 637
Words 122
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 20

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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