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The Crescent Moon

Pagehush Classics Famous stories, poems and fables that are old enough to be … Follow

Tagore's poems of childhood, in his own English: a child dreaming of being a sailor, a hero, a star, a flower; a mother watching her baby sleep; paper boats sent down the stream. By Rabindranath Tagore (1913), translated by the author. A public-domain classic.

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How it begins I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser.The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent. Keep reading →

About this story

These are poems about children and childhood: a child who dreams of being a sailor, a hero, a star or a flower; a mother watching her baby sleep; paper boats sent down the stream. Most of them are very short, and they are meant to be dipped into rather than read straight through.

Tagore published them in English in 1913, translated by himself from his Bengali book Shishu, the same year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. They are among his most loved poems, and are written from a child’s point of view with a warm and playful voice.

Themes: Childhood, a mother’s love, imagination
Good for: Reading aloud to children; a gift for new parents
Worth noticing: How often the child in the poems is talking to the mother.

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