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Question
Describe the reminiscences of the poet, when she sees the casuarina tree.
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Solution
The poet remembers how her days started with the sight of the Casuarina tree from her casement. She remembers how her loving companions played under the giant Casuarina tree. The memory of her beloved companions brings hot tears because they had succumbed to cruel tuberculosis. She remembers how well the tree accommodated birds to sing songs during days and nights. The tree had allowed the creeper to embrace it like a lady love. Though it sapped its vitality, like a gallant lover, allowed the creeper to stay around its neck like a scarf. She remembers how a baboon seated at the crest of the tree had watched beautiful sunrise while her young ones were leaping and playing in the lower branches of the giant tree.
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And all the men and women merely players;
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Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
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And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
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In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
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Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
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