The Banyan Tree by Rabindranath Tagore is one of the memorable poems excerpted from The Crescent Moon which the poet translated from the original to be published in 1913 in dedication to T. Sturge Moore, who nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The poet has drawn upon childhood memories and reminiscences and observations. Experience too has taught him in some way. The sturdy growth of the mighty tree stands as myth and mystery. The memories of his childhood lie in connected with. Intercepting the overgrown tree and its foliage diversified and branched over with the aerial roots hanging down, nested with birds, the poet likes to share the stuff of his space. The address with which he starts is poetic enough to take us by stride. The ancient tree is without any doubt a landmark. The tree is there, but we may not be.

None but the poet has called it Children Poems. A child’s Blakian heart in them is so full of innocence and ignorance. Wordsworth’s ‘The child is farther of man’ can opine us otherwise in a beautiful way.

Do you remember the child who used to sit by the window and wonder at the tangle of yours, your boughs and twigs spreading it over, the canopy and the avenues, the green foliage spreading it around, the green cover and periphery of yours? O shaggy tree by the pond! We wonder how have you overgrown over the years? It is really amazing to see a banyan tree with the aerial roots hanging and the children hanging onto and swinging. The birds may have flown, but he has not forgotten the days spent seeing it, marking the tree through a window-view.

The banyan tree by the pond is scenic and landscapic. Women come to fill the pitchers with water, but the shades and shadows of you keep wriggling on water. Sometimes it appears to be dark and frightening, adding to man’s loneliness and he finds himself alone in a world of bizarre Nature.

But the forays made by the flashing sun add to the golden tapestry of dreams. The flashing sun dazzling and focusing pierce on the bottom-level, lighting the things crystal clear.

“O you shaggy-headed banyan tree
standing on the bank of the pond, have
you forgotten the little child, like the birds that
have nested in your branches and left you?

Do you not remember how he sat at the
window and wondered at the tangle of your
roots that plunged underground?

The women would come to fill their jars in
the pond, and your huge black shadow would
wriggle on the water like sleep struggling to
wake up.

Sunlight danced on the ripples like restless
tiny shuttles weaving golden tapestry.

Two ducks swam by the weedy margin
above their shadows, and the child would sit
still and think.

He longed to be the wind and blow
through your rustling branches, to be your
shadow and lengthen with the day on the
water, to be a bird and perch on your topmost
twig, and to float like those ducks among the
weeds and shadows.”

As such was the mesmerizing foliage, rugged and shaggy bust and stems adding to a cover-up that he longed to be the wind blowing through the rustling branches. The poetic inner heart wished to be its shadow lengthened with the day on the water. Like a bird, he wished to perch on the topmost twig and thought of the ducks steering through the weedy part of the pond.