Rabindranath Tagore

The Gardener

Servant
Have mercy upon your servant, my queen!
Queen
The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why do you come at this late hour?
Servant
When you have finished with the others, that is my time.
I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do.
Queen
What can you expect when it is too late?
Servant
Make me the gardener of your flower garden.
Queen
What folly is this?
Servant
I will give up my other work.
I throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do no send me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests. But make me the gardener of your flower garden.
Queen
What will your duties be?
Servant
The service of your idle days.

flowers eager for death

The flowers want to die under her feet—a paradox that reveals the servant's psychology. He's romanticizing his own erasure in her service.

I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning, where your feet will be greeted with praise at every step by the flowers eager for death.
I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna, where the early evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves.

saptaparna tree

A tree sacred in Hindu and Buddhist tradition, known for its seven-leafed branches. Tagore specifies this tree rather than any generic tree—it's a deliberate choice connecting intimacy to sacred space.

I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron paste in wondrous designs.
Queen
What will you have for your reward?
Servant

ashoka petals

The ashoka tree symbolizes love and fertility in Sanskrit literature. Its name literally means "without grief." The servant wants to mark the queen with a love symbol.

To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge the soles of your feet with the red juice of ashoka petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there.
Queen
Your prayers will be granted, my servant, you will be the gardener of my flower garden.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Gardener as Courtly Love Inversion

This poem reverses the traditional power dynamic of courtly love poetry. In medieval European tradition, the lover serves his lady from a distance, performing heroic deeds. Here, the servant explicitly rejects heroic service—"I throw my swords and lances down in the dust"—and asks instead for domestic intimacy.

The request is subversive. A gardener has physical access: he touches the queen's walking paths, her bedroom, her feet. By asking to become a gardener, the servant is asking for what a warrior could never have—bodily proximity. The poem's tension comes from the queen understanding this perfectly well ("What folly is this?") yet granting the request anyway.

Tagore wrote *The Gardener* (1913) as love lyrics, published between his two most famous works. The collection explores the coded language of desire in Indian poetic tradition, where religious devotion and erotic longing use the same vocabulary. This poem makes that double meaning literal: the servant speaks like a devotee ("Have mercy") but describes sensual acts (touching her feet, kissing away dust).

What the Servant Actually Wants

Look at what the servant promises to do: maintain her morning path, swing her in the evening, tend her bedside lamp, decorate her footstool. These are acts of anticipation—he'll be present in every private moment of her day, even when she's alone.

The reward he asks for is telling: "to hold your little fists," "slip flower chains over your wrists," "tinge the soles of your feet." These are acts of adornment and touch. He wants to dress her, mark her body, kiss her feet. The language of service becomes indistinguishable from the language of possession.

The "idle days" phrase is crucial. He's not asking to serve her public, queenly functions—he wants her private, unproductive time. The garden is a space outside political power, where the hierarchy that makes her queen and him servant theoretically dissolves. Except it doesn't: the entire fantasy depends on maintaining that hierarchy while enjoying the intimacy it normally forbids.