A Comparative Study of Where Go the Boats? by R.L. Stevenson (1850-1894), Paper Boats by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and Paper Boats by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898—1990)

I think Stevenson’s is the best and the poem really lures and takes us away. With it we can read the mind and heart of a child. What is that catches it his imagination? A child lives in dreams is the reality that we do not know it.

Where Go the Boats? by R.L. Stevenson

Where Go the Boats? Where do the boats go? is really the question. A child can think as such out of curiosity. We know that the poem is intended for the children, but apart from meant for them, the little hearts and souls, it is for all. Whatever be it, there is some curiosity underlining it. We also think where the boats go floating on, flowing down the current. The doubt is not of the children’s heart, but of our hearts too. The poem reminds us of Auden’s Look, Stranger and Coleridge’s The Rime of The Ancient Mariner. Tennyson’s The Brook too can be texted for our reading as for the musical chatter, flow and murmur of it.

The river is dark brown flowing all through the years with trees on either side of it. To flow is its routine, to flow and pass by its song. Golden is the sand. It has been flowing for ages and ages as such is the course of it. The trees are on either side of the river.

Green leaves can be seen hurtling across, swaying past. The castles of foam keep dashing, surfing over so do go a-boating the boats of his. The kites, how will they be threaded back? The birds have flown away, what it to say it about? So is the case herein. When will the boats come back? It depends on favorable winds.

The river keeps going, running, flowing and floating by, with the waters rushing down. It passes through the hill; sails through the valley.

Down below, miles and miles away, his boats the other children will come to own them. The poem is just like Look, Stranger by Auden and Sea Fever by Masefield.

His boats, paper boats the children bring them ashore miles and miles away, even taking a hundred or more from the place of their launch into the waters. 

Dark brown is the river.  
Golden is the sand.  
It flows along for ever,  
With trees on either hand.  

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,  
Boats of mine a-boating—  
Where will all come home?  

On goes the river  
And out past the mill,  
Away down the valley,  
Away down the hill.  

Away down the river,  
A hundred miles or more,  
Other little children  
Shall bring my boats ashore.

Paper Boats (1913) by Rabindranath Tagore

Paper Boats is one of the most beautiful as well as meaningful poems of Tagore which have been incorporated in the collection named The Crescent Moon rendered into English by Tagore from his Bengali originals. Let us see how the boats of his go running down the river. How does he float it on the paper boats? How are the boats of fancy and imagination? How the aspiration of his?  

The child’s dream he has improvised. The poet as a child protagonist writes the name on them with the whereabouts mentioned as for to float into the stream and they go rushing on, flowing down with the current. He hopes that somebody in some strange land will definitely find them and will come to feel his identity.

The boy dreams of the boats going, rushing down. Where will they go? Where will they sail unto? And what people of which strange land will come to get the boats? Not only that, he looks unto the skies lurking over to find the ships of clouds sailing overhead, the silvery ships of white clouds making a way. The child-poet, we mean the child in the poet speaks through the lines and it is a delineation of a child’s mind and heart. The poet’s ‘manna’ is but a penetration of the child heart which he does it herein.

Finally, these boats of Tagore do not remain the same boats but turn into the dream boats of fairies.

Day by day I float my paper boats
one by one down the running stream.
In big black letters I write my name on
them and the name of the village where I live.

I hope that someone in some strange land
will find them and know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flowers
from our garden, and hope that these blooms
of the dawn will be carried safely to land in the night.

I launch my paper boats and look up into
the sky and see the little clouds setting their white bulging sails.
I know not what playmate of mine in the
sky sends them down the air to race with my boats!

When night comes, I bury my face in my arms
and dream that my paper boats float
on and on under the midnight stars.
The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and
the lading is their baskets full of dreams.

Where Go the Boats? is a song of the children; it talks about the joy of reveling, playing, sailing of the boats. How do they make the boats out of paperwork and flow and float them on waters? Blakian boys, Lambian dream children are the protagonists of the poem; the mouthpieces of it. In Tagore, they make the houses of sand to be levelled which are but the houses of maya.

It is a great defect of Harindranath that he cannot align with as something breaks the charm and rhythm of his poetry. Rushing it down the valley, it is a pleasure to watch them sailing away.

Paper Boats  by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya set the paper boat afloat to find where it could go, how long could it travel to. How was the passage of it? How long could it go to? He wanted to know the course of it. Hoe would it be the course of it? It is a matter of long ago. Out of curiosity he wanted to know.

God set him on a lone stream and enquired where could he sail to. How would it be his journey by boat?

On a dim stream
I set afloat
A paper boat long, long ago,
And said, “‘ my little paper boat
We'll see how far you go!”
On a lone stream long, long ago

God set me joyously afloat
And said, “‘ we'll see how far you go,
My little paper boat ! ”