Casuarina Tree Essay

498 Words2 Pages
• “ ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ ends the little volume. It opens with a description of the giant tree, festooned with the crimson flowers of a great creeper which winds round and round it ‘like a huge python’. By day and by night it is a centre of busy life and sweet bird-song. It is the finest object on which the poetess’s eyes rest as she flings wide her window at dawn, and sometimes in the early light A grey baboon sits statue-like alone Watching the early sunrise. The shadow of the tree thrown across the tank makes the white water-lilies there look ‘like snow enmassed’. Yet, grand and beautiful as is the tree, it is dear chiefly for the memories that cluster round it—memories of a time when happy children played under its shade. The thought brings out an intense yearning towards the playmates lost: O sweet companions, loved with love intense, For your sakes shall the tree be ever dear! To the poetess’s imagination, the tree in sympathy sounds a dirge ‘Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach’. That ‘eerie speech’, she thinks, may haply reach the unknown land and strike a chord of memory there. Such a wail had always this power over her own mind. Even when heard by the sea-shore in France or Italy, it had always sent thought winging its way homeward bringing remembrance of the Tree as seen and loved in childhood. The last verse of the poem, with its note of Romanticism, hints at a desire for immortality of verse, and ends with the beautiful line: May Love defend thee from oblivion’s curse. The eleven-lined stanza in which the poem is written is a new and very successful experiement. For its rich imagery, the music of its verses, and the tenderness and pathos with which it is instinct, we would place this poem second to none in the volume (Das 340-341). (Introductory material from: Das, Harihar. Life and Letters of Toru Dutt. London: Oxford
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