Toru Dutt

Like a huge Python, winding round and round      The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,      Up to its very summit near the stars,   A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound      No other tree could live. But gallantly         The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung   In crimson clusters all the boughs among,      Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;   And oft at nights the garden overflows   With one sweet song that seems to have no close,           Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.  

When first my casement is wide open thrown      At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;      Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest   A gray baboon sits statue-like alone            Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs   His puny offspring leap about and play;   And far and near kokilas hail the day;      And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;   And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast           By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,   The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.  

But not because of its magnificence      Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:      Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,         O sweet companions, loved with love intense,      For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.   Blent with your images, it shall arise   In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!      What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear         Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?   It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,   That haply to the unknown land may reach.  

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!      Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away            In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,   When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith      And the waves gently kissed the classic shore   Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,   When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:          And every time the music rose,—before   Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,   Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime   I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.  

#100DaysOfWriting Toru Dutt | Sonnet

Toru Dutt A sea of foliage girds our garden round, But not a sea of dull unvaried green, Sharp contrasts of all colors here are seen; The light-green graceful tamarinds abound Amid the mango clumps of green profound, And palms arise, like pillars gray, between; And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean, Red—red, and startling like a trumpet's sound. But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges Of…

Love came to Flora asking for a flower That would of flowers be undisputed queen, The lily and the rose, long, long had been Rivals for that high honour. Bards of power Had sung their claims. “The rose can never tower Like the pale lily with her Juno mien”- “But is the lily lovelier?” Thus between Flower-factions rang the strife in Psyche’s bower.  “Give me a flower delicious as the rose And stately as the lily in her pride”- “But of what colour?”- “Rose-red,” Love first chose, Then prayed, -“No, lily-white,-or, both provide”;  And Flora gave the lotus, “rose-red” dyed, And “lily-white,”- the queenliest flower that blows.

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Sonnet-The Lotus

Toru Dutt তরু দত্ত)  1856-1877

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