Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/91

We see the small boy sit at the window to watch how the shadow of the banyan tree wriggles on the disturbed water when the women come to fill their jars at the pond. We see the child taking his father's books to scribble in, or writing-paper to make boats with; and how he watches the evening come and the old fisher-woman gather herbs for her supper by the side of the pond, or the watchman swing his lantern and walk with the shadow at his side. The pictures of a child gathering golden champa flowers that drop on the forest path, dancing on the sea-shore, or sitting in the dust to play with a broken twig and his own fancies, are succeeded by another of the crying urchin whose fingers and face are both tear-stained and ink-stained. To appreciate the last poem to the full, we need to know something of the custom of Indian school-children. In that true, if apparently fictive, history of a Bengal Raiyat, "Govinda Sámanta," which traces the career of its hero from childhood up, we are told that he always returned home from school with his hands, face, and garment bespattered with ink; for whenever he wrote on the palm-leaf and made a wrong letter or formed one amiss, he