EBOOK THE GARDENER ***
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THE GARDENER
[Frontispiece: Rabindranath Tagore. Age 16--see tagore.jpg]
THE GARDENER
By
Rabindranath Tagore
Translated by the author from the original Bengali
1915
To
W. B. Yeats
Thanks are due to the editor of _Poetry, a Magazine of Verse_,
for permission to reprint eight poems in this volume.
Preface
Most of the lyrics of love and life, the translations of which
from Bengali are published in this book, were written much
earlier than the series of religious poems contained in the book
named _Gitanjali_. The translations are not always literal--
the originals being sometimes abridged and sometimes
paraphrased.
Rabindranath Tagore.
1
SERVANT. Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!
QUEEN. The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why
do you come at this late hour?
SERVANT. When you have finished with others, that is my time.
I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.
QUEEN. What can you expect when it is too late?
SERVANT. Make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN. What folly is this?
SERVANT. I will give up my other work.
I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send
me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests.
But make me the gardener of your flower garden.
QUEEN. What will your duties be?
SERVANT.
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