Toru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical Analysis
Toru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical Analysis
Toru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical Analysis
‘Our Casuarina Tree’ by Miss Toru Dutt is an exceptional nature poem. It is a narrative, reflective, philosophic and romantic poem. The poem contains five stanzas.
The first two stanzas are narrative in which the poet gives a description of the Casuarina tree which shows her minute observation of the natural object and thus he expresses his love for nature. The Casuarina tree was a very big tree. It had been standing high very proudly. The creepers climbed up to it. Its flowers hang in a crimson cluster. All day long many birds and bees came and perched on it. At night, sweet songs of birds were heard. In the very morning while the poet opened his door his eyes first rested on the tree that was in front of his home. Sometimes, in winter a grey baboon came to the tree and sat on its branch alone like a statue and watched the sun rising scene. His puny offspring leaped here and there and played, cuckoos (kokilas) also came to the tree and sang songs hailing the day. The cows grazed on the pasture under the tree. Beside the tree, there was a broad tank (pond) of water and in it, beautiful lilies sprang and bloomed.
The third and fourth stanzas of the poem ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ are reflective. Here the tree stands as a token of reminiscence. The tree reminds the poet’s childhood days. The poet says that the tree is dearer to his soul not because of its magnificence but because the poet with her brother and sister played under the tree during their childhood. But the merriment of childhood days has passed away. Now, while the poet looks at the tree, the memory of her childhood days comes to his mind. But his playmates are no more now. Some of them are either dead or have gone away leaving the poet. While he remembers his childhood days with his mates and maids then tears come out of her eyes. In his mind. the poet hears a murmuring sound which he thinks to be a dirge lamenting the past days. The poet says:
”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.”
In the fifth but last stanza, the poet Toru Dutta says that the tree is dearer than life to him. The tree was dearer to them also who have died already. It was for them a token of fear, hope and death. In the future, the beauty of the tree would faint but in the verse of the poet the tree shall be living, and thus his love for the tree would remain alive and thus his love for the tree shall defend the tree from the course of oblivion.
As a nature poem, this is a grand one. It is as grand as Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey‘ as it bears the description of nature, and memory of his childhood which is autographical and philosophic.
The language of the poem is not an easy one as the poet uses compact phrases full of meaning. The imageries of the poem are also fascinating as-
”What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a single-beach?
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech.”
The poem both in theme and style is a fine poem which as a nature poem, is an unprecedented specimen in the whole range of Indo-Anglian poetry. 0 0 0
Toru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical AnalysisToru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical Analysis
Read More: The Poetry of Toru Dutt-Chief Features
N. B. This article entitled ‘Toru Dutt’s Poem ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ – A Critical Analysis’ originally belongs to the book ‘Indian English Poetry Criticism‘ by Menonim Menonimus. Toru Dutt | Our Casuarina Tree | A Critical Analysis
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