1 h 34 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A servant stands before a queen, asking for the humblest work: where does service end and love begin?
In The Gardener, Rabindranath Tagore gathers eighty-five short lyric poems around love, longing and the natural world. A servant offers himself to a queen. A lover waits beside a road, a window or a riverbank. These small scenes hold the uncertainty of desire, from a first glance to the ache of parting.
Flowers, rivers, clouds and spring winds do more than surround the lovers. They share in the poems’ questions about what love means. A young girl, a wanderer and a poet add their voices. Brief and unrhymed, the poems feel like spoken confidences, while earthly affection sometimes seems to open toward something larger.
What you’ll discover
- The servant and queen Enter through a quiet exchange where an offer of humble work sets love’s questions in motion.
- Love before an answer Wait beside roads and riverbanks with lovers who do not yet know whether love returns.
- Nature shares the longing Find flowers, evening light and spring winds woven into the lovers’ feelings.
- Voices close to you Meet a young girl, a traveller and a poet in brief scenes that invite slow attention.
- Beyond the beloved Explore poems where desire for another person seems to point beyond earthly love.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, quiet poems about love, seasons and longing, and anyone who knows Gitanjali and wants Tagore's more earthly side.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A servant offers himself to a queen
- Love lives in waiting and longing
- The natural world answers the lovers
- Desire opens toward something larger
- Voices, scenes and the wandering spirit
- How to read these poems aloud
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Le Jardinier
by Rabindranath Tagore · 1913
A servant stands before a queen as Tagore's poems explore love, longing and what desire is really reaching for.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
A servant offers himself to a queen
The collection opens with a short exchange between a servant and a queen. The servant asks for work, even the humblest work, and the poem sets up a pattern that returns again and again. One person offers devotion, and the other holds all the power. It is a love poem, but it is also a poem about service.
The figure of the gardener gives the book its title and its basic image. A gardener does not make flowers by force. He plants, waters, waits and watches. Tagore uses this picture for the lover and for the poet, who both tend something they cannot command.
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What is The Gardener by Tagore about?
It is a collection of short lyric poems about love, longing, nature and the soul. Speakers such as a servant, a lover and a traveller appear in small scenes, and the poems often hint at a deeper spiritual meaning.
Is The Gardener the same as Gitanjali?
No. Gitanjali is a book of devotional songs addressed to God. The Gardener is a separate collection, mostly about human love and nature, though it carries a spiritual undertone. Both appeared in English around 1913.
When was The Gardener published?
It appeared in English in 1913, the year Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Most of its poems draw on his earlier Bengali writing, so they come from a younger stage of his career.
The author
Rabindranath Tagore
1861–1941 · Bengali poet and philosopher
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet and writer born in Calcutta, British India, where he also died. He lived in Bengal and founded a school at Santiniketan in 1901. He wrote poetry, stories, plays and essays. His Bengali collection Gitanjali appeared in 1910; his English version appeared in 1912.
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