1 h 34 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 1 h 34 minPaperback · 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
Readers who enjoy short lyric poems about love and nature will love this collection, as will those drawn to village life, quiet spiritual questions, and lasting images of birds, rivers, lamps and flowers.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love asks little and gives all
- Love cannot erase every distance
- Small gestures carry great feeling
- An open heart remains a mystery
- Brief lives call for open hearts
- Possession destroys what love cherishes
- The search can overlook nearby gifts
- Ordinary care reveals a wider kinship
- Human love opens onto larger questions
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The Gardener
by Rabindranath Tagore · 1913
A servant offers to abandon his weapons to tend a queen's garden, and eighty-four more short poems follow.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read2 languages
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In short
What happens when a servant walks up to a queen after her assembly ends and asks only to tend her flowers? That small scene opens The Gardener.
The Gardener at a glance
- Reading time
- About 55 min40 min fast, 1 h 5 min slow
- Length
- 12,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1913by Rabindranath Tagore
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A servant asks to become the gardener
The book opens with a short play of two voices. A servant comes to a queen after her court has emptied and asks for work. He offers to give up his swords and lances and all his conquests in far-off courts. All he wants is to be the gardener of her flower garden.
The queen finds this foolish, so he explains his duties. He will keep the morning path fresh, swing her among the branches of the saptaparna tree, and fill her bedside lamp with scented oil. His reward is small and tender. He asks to slip flower chains over her wrists and kiss away any speck of dust from her feet. She grants his wish.
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- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 15 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1913
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 1 h 0 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Tagore, Rabindranath. The Gardener. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gardener.
Tagore, R. (2026). The gardener. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gardener (Original work published 1913)
Tagore, Rabindranath. The Gardener. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gardener.
@book{tagore2026gardener,
author = {Tagore, Rabindranath},
title = {The Gardener},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-gardener},
note = {First published 1913}
}
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What is The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore about?
It is a collection of eighty-five short poems about love, nature and the search for God. Its voices include lovers, brides, travelers, villagers and a poet, and the mood moves from courtship to parting and then to spiritual longing.
Who is the gardener in Tagore's poems?
The gardener appears in the first poem as a servant who asks a queen to let him tend her flower garden. He stands for the lover and poet who serves beauty without owning it.
Why is The Gardener dedicated to W. B. Yeats?
Tagore dedicated the book to the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, who admired his poetry and helped bring it to readers in English. The dedication stands on the first page, before the opening poem.
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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