The poet Toru Dutt describes the perpetually young Casuarina tree in this poem. The tree is tall and mighty. A creeper winds around its huge and wide trunk like a python. Birds chirp happily. The poet is ecstatic seeing the tree from her casement / window. In fact, she greets the tree everyday soon after getting up from bed. She finds a baboon sitting like a statue on top of the tree. The cows are grazing in the lush green meadows around the tree. Water lilies add to the charm of the pond. She recalls that the tree is dear not because of its majestic looks but because of the nostalgic memories attached to it.
She remembers the happy times she had spent with her siblings, who are now no more, under the tree. They died of consumption. Their absence makes the tree much more endearing to the poet. Mysteriously she hears the grief-filled lament of the tree when she is on the shores of France and Italy. She consecrates the tree’s memory to her dear departed siblings. Taking inspiration from William Wordsworth’s poem ‘Yew-trees’ , she also wishes to immortalize the Cauarina tree. So she sings about it in her poem.