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 CHAPTER IV

"THE GARDENER"

of us who made our first acquaintance with Rabindranath through may, on turning to the pages of, be deceived by an apparent likeness of rhythm and colour into thinking the poems of the same stock. But in reality they belong to another phase; they are the songs of his earlier manhood, drawn largely from three volumes, entitled, , and. We lose much, it is said, of the charm of their original measures, because the English medium gives them a demurer, more serious air than that intrinsically belonging to them.

A fellow-countrywoman of their writer, herself a poet, said that to understand his hold over his Bengali readers, especially the younger generation, it was indispensable to read the songs of his youth in the original. Others have 31