In Tour Dutt’s Our Casuarina Tree the
tree not only emerges as a symbol of the poet’s bygone days of childhood but it
also subtly hints at the poet’s intense craving for permanence and eternity.
The poem is a romantic protest against transience. The poem moves from
observation to impression and transcends the limits of remembrance to reach the
heights of reflection. The poet attempts to immortalize the tree through her
verse. The theme of the poem is the supremacy of the tree over time and death.
The trope of conferring immortality through verse was a Greek convention. It
was also used by Shakespeare in several of his sonnets. Toru Dutt too adopts
the same convention as she seeks to immortalize the tree from the ‘Oblivion’s Curse.’
The six stanza poem brings out the warmth
of her relationship with the tree. It stood with its colossal form supporting a
creeper growing around it. Whereas the first stanza gives an objective
description of the tree, “the second relates the tree to the poet’ own
impression of it at different times; the third Links up the tree with her
memories of her lost brother and sister; the fourth humanizes the tree, for its
lament is human recordation of pain and regret, the last stanza wills as it
were the immortality of the tree.” (Iyengar).
