When Rabindranath was a boy he went with his father on a long pilgrimage along the great rivers and over the plains of Bengal and up to the foot of the Himalayas. During these wanderings the spirit of nature conspired with the art of the Vaishnava singers to teach him a lyric philosophy of life, none the less real because in youth it was a half-unconscious influence. Its first and its wildest expression was in the early books already described, which have not been turned into English.
The sounds of wind and water, and the rhythms of nature, are used in The Gardener at every turn to enhance the song of the lover and the romance of his desire:
Does the earth like a harp shiver into song with the touch of my feet?
Is it true that the dewdrops fall from the eyes of night when I am seen, and that the light of the morning is glad when it wraps my body round?
In the second song we have the key to the book. There the poet, as if realising that the world might look upon him as too remote from the passions of men and women, dramatises the question and answer:
