The Poetry Woodland Series: "Our Casuarina Tree"

Public domain poetry readings & analysis. Vol. 3 | Toru Dutt's poems 🪐

Our Casuarina Tree*

by Toru Dutt

Like a huge Python, winding round and round
The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars
Up to its very summit near the stars,
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound
No other tree could live. But gallantly
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung
In crimson clusters all the boughs among,
Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;
And oft at nights the garden overflows
With one sweet song that seems to have no close,
Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.

When first my casement is wide open thrown
At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;
Sometimes, and most in winter,--on its crest
A grey baboon sits statue-like alone
Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs
His puny offspring leap about and play;
And far and near kokilas hail the day;
And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.

But not because of its magnificence
Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:
Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,
For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear!
Blent with your images, it shall arise
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!
What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It is the tree's lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach.

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,
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith
And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,
When earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon:
And every time the music rose,--before
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay
Unto thy honour, Tree, beloved of those
Who now in blessed sleep, for aye, repose,
Dearer than life to me, alas! were they!
Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless trees--like those in Borrowdale,
Under whose awful branches lingered pale
"Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,
And Time the shadow;" and though weak the verse
That would thy beauty fain, oh fain rehearse,
May Love defend thee from Oblivion's curse.

*This poem is in the public domain!

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Toru Dutt (Tarulatta Datta - Bengali: তরু দত্ত) was born on March 4, 1856, in Kolkata, India. She was an Indian Bengali poet, translator, and essayist, who wrote in English and French from British-occupied India. She is one of the founding figures of Indo-Anglian literature, alongside Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831), Manmohan Ghose (1869–1924), and Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949). Dutt wrote several volumes of poetry in English and a novel—the first written by an Indian writer in French. Her writing explores themes of longing, loneliness, nostalgia, and patriotism. She died of tuberculosis on August 30, 1877, at age 21. Please read more about her life and work here.

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I love the nostalgia braided into Toru Dutt’s poem. Via Oxford, nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

Nostalgia can be weaponized when this definition is applied—via a large group of people—to something that didn’t really exist. For example, consider this essay, Peeling Back the Myth of a “White” Midwest. However, in the case of Dutt’s poem (alongside many poems written by PoGM), nostalgia is resistance. It is revolutionary.¹

The play between dreaming, consuming (with all five senses), memory, and prayer are what keep people, experiences, and land alive through non linear space time. The cyclical beauty of the tree’s ability to remember alongside Dutt is a way of bringing us back to a central truth: that we (as in humans and nature) are meant to help one another stand and reach.

“May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse” is sticking with me; she’s writing about Home (capital H!) too, using the Casuarina tree as a metaphor for a people and a place lasting so long as the tree stands. This is why the removal of ancestral olive trees (among other indigenous flora) in Lebanon and Palestine is so deeply soul wounding (Eduardo Duran’s phrase). Dreaming, here, is powerful in it’s ability to maintain and nurture the thread between people and their homeland when displaced from it and/or needing to keep a past version of it alive. I’m reminded of a short story, The Land of Dreams, which explores a dystopian world in which Kashmiris are forbidden to dream. Please read it if you’re able.

And, speaky of poetry, Rest in power, Marcellus Williams. Please read one of his beautiful poems, here.

1. Take a look through this blog/article by Prince Kumar, which includes a summary, themes, and structure analysis for Dutt’s poem. It has some wonderful insight & accompanying images of the casuarina tree. :)