I Cannot Remember My Mother | CBSE Class 9 English Notes
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What is this poem about?
This is a short lyric by Rabindranath Tagore, spoken in the voice of a child who lost his mother so early that he has no direct, conscious memory of her face or her presence.
Instead, the poem explores how the child senses his mother through indirect, sensory impressions: a half-remembered tune, a familiar scent in the morning air, and the feeling of being watched tenderly from the sky.
Each of the three stanzas opens with the same admission that the poet has no memory of his mother, a line that works as a refrain running through the poem like a musical return.
After this admission of forgetting, each stanza immediately offers a sensory trace that contradicts the forgetting, so that the poem becomes a quiet exploration of how love and memory can survive even when factual recollection cannot.
The poem uses the three senses of hearing (the hummed tune), smell (the shiuli flowers and temple scent) and sight (the sky and the mother's gaze) to build a picture of a mother's presence that lingers in the world around the child rather than in his conscious memory.
The poem does not follow a fixed rhyme scheme; it is written in free verse, yet its structure and repetition give it a gentle, musical quality.
What happens in the poem, stanza by stanza?
Stanza 1: a tune that hovers over play
The poet opens with the refrain, stating plainly that he has no memory of his mother. He then qualifies this: "only sometimes in the midst of my play / a tune seems to hover over my playthings".
While he is playing, a half-heard melody seems to linger near his toys, and he identifies it as "the tune of some song that she used to hum while rocking my cradle".
The word "seems" is important here; the poet is careful to say the tune only appears to hover, not that he is certain of it, keeping the memory tentative and dreamlike rather than firm.
This stanza connects the mother to the sense of hearing. The cradle-song she once hummed to put him to sleep as an infant now resurfaces, unbidden, during ordinary play, suggesting that such early, wordless memories can embed themselves in a child's mind even without his awareness.
Stanza 2: the scent of shiuli flowers
The second stanza shifts to smell. The poet again opens with the refrain before describing "the early autumn morning" when "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air".
He links this fragrance to "the scent of the morning service in the temple", which in turn "comes to me as the scent of my mother".
The shiuli flower, associated in India with autumn mornings and temple rituals, becomes a fragrant bridge between the natural world, religious devotion and the memory of the mother, even though the poet never consciously recalls her.
Stanza 3: the stillness of a gaze in the sky
In the final stanza the poet turns to sight. He repeats the refrain once more, then describes looking from his "bedroom window" and sending "my eyes into the blue of the distant sky".
He then "feels" (again a tentative, emotional verb rather than a claim of certainty) "that the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face has spread all over the sky".
The vast, calm sky becomes a symbol of his mother's watchful, loving gaze, suggesting that her presence, though unremembered in fact, still envelops him like the sky itself.
Across the three stanzas, the poem moves outward from the intimacy of play and a cradle-song, through the open air of an autumn morning, to the limitless sky, widening the scope of the mother's felt presence even as the poet insists at each stage that he "cannot remember" her directly.
What poetic devices does the poet use in this poem?
What is the refrain and how is it used?
A refrain is a line or group of lines repeated at regular intervals in a poem. Here, the refrain opens every stanza, so the poem returns to this admission of forgetting three times.
The repetition reinforces the central paradox of the poem: the poet insists he cannot remember, yet each stanza immediately offers evidence of a felt, sensory connection to his mother.
Where does the poet use symbolism?
Symbolism is the use of a tangible object or phenomenon to represent something beyond its literal meaning.
In this poem, the hummed tune symbolises the mother's voice and nurturing care; the shiuli flowers and temple scent symbolise her gentle, spiritual presence; and the vast blue sky symbolises the enduring, watchful nature of her gaze, which the poet feels has "spread all over the sky".
What examples of alliteration and onomatopoeia appear?
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby words. Examples include "flowers floats" in the line "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air", and the repeated "s" sounds in "the stillness... has spread all over the sky".
Onomatopoeia, where a word imitates a sound, appears in "hum", describing the soft, wordless tune the mother used to sing.
How does the poem use imagery, and what about rhyme?
The poem relies heavily on sensory imagery: auditory imagery (the hovering tune, the hum), olfactory imagery (the shiuli flowers, the temple scent) and visual imagery (the blue sky, the mother's gaze).
Although the poem has no fixed rhyme scheme and is written in free verse, it remains enjoyable because of its gentle rhythm, the repeated refrain, and the vivid, layered images in each stanza.
What are the themes of the poem?
The persistence of memory beyond conscious recollection
The poem's central theme is that memory does not depend only on conscious recall. The child "cannot remember" his mother in any factual sense, yet fragments of sound, smell and sight keep surfacing, showing that emotional impressions formed in early infancy can persist long after the events themselves are forgotten.
The poet never claims certainty about these impressions; he uses hedged verbs like "seems" and "feel" throughout, so the poem presents memory as something tentative and felt rather than something fixed and known.
The maternal bond and sensory memory
The poem suggests that a mother's love leaves traces in the senses rather than in deliberate memory: a half-heard tune during play, a familiar scent on an autumn morning, and a felt gaze in the open sky.
Each sense becomes a private, involuntary channel through which the mother's presence is still felt, even though the poet repeats, stanza after stanza, that he "cannot remember" her directly.
This theme is reinforced by the way each stanza pairs the refrain with an immediate sensory contradiction, so the bond is shown to survive through feeling even where fact fails.
Nature as a vessel of emotional connection
Nature, in the form of flowers, morning air and the sky, repeatedly carries the memory of the mother to the child.
The shiuli flower's scent is linked to temple ritual and, through that, to the mother; the sky becomes an extension of her gaze.
Nature thus acts as an intermediary that keeps the mother's presence alive for the child even in her physical absence, binding together the poem's outdoor and indoor settings across the three stanzas.
The coexistence of presence and absence
A further theme, named directly in the framing given to the poem, is that "presence and absence can coexist through emotional memory".
The poet is physically without his mother and admits he cannot remember her, yet he simultaneously experiences her as present through a tune, a scent and a gaze.
The poem does not resolve this tension; it simply holds both states together, suggesting that a loved one's absence need not erase the feeling of their presence.
What are the key quotations in the poem?
This section explains the poem's main technique in detail: the poet repeats a line of forgetting, then immediately offers a sensory trace that softens or contradicts that very statement. Each short extract below is copied directly from the stanza named in its caption.
Taken in order, the seven short extracts trace the poem's movement across the three senses it uses in turn, one dominant sense per stanza, moving from the intimacy of a child's play, through an ordinary autumn morning and a temple's morning service, to the vast, open sky seen from a bedroom window.
Reading the extracts stanza by stanza also shows how tightly the poem is built: each stanza opens with the same denial, then narrows at once to a single concrete image, a cradle-song, a flower's scent, or a mother's gaze, before widening that image outward into something larger than the child himself.
"...cannot remember my mother": the refrain opening every stanza, stating the child's lack of direct memory.
This refrain is repeated at the start of all three stanzas, and each repetition is followed at once by a sensory image that gently undercuts the denial it makes. The return of this exact line gives the whole poem a song-like, cyclical structure even though it carries no fixed rhyme scheme.
"a tune seems to hover over my playthings": the half-remembered cradle-song surfacing during play, stanza 1.
"the tune of some song that she used to hum while rocking my cradle": the mother's lullaby remembered through sound alone, stanza 1.
Together, these two lines from the first stanza show the auditory sense at work. A wordless, hummed tune from infancy resurfaces without warning while the child is absorbed in an entirely unrelated activity, his own ordinary play with his playthings.
"the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air": the autumn-morning scent that opens stanza 2's memory.
"the scent of the morning service in the temple comes to me as the scent of my mother": temple scent linked to the mother, stanza 2.
These two lines carry the olfactory sense, moving in three short steps from an outdoor autumn scent, to a temple's morning ritual, and finally to the mother herself. Nature and worship together become a quiet path back to her memory, even without any factual recollection of her face or voice.
"I send my eyes into the blue of the distant sky": the poet looking out from his bedroom window, stanza 3.
"the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face has spread all over the sky": the mother's gaze imagined as filling the sky, stanza 3.
These final two lines carry the visual sense, turning the vast, calm sky into a symbol for the mother's watchful, enduring gaze. The poet "feels" this presence rather than claiming to see it with any certainty, which keeps the image tentative, gentle and unforced rather than stated as plain fact.
Read as a set, these seven lines trace the poem's deliberate movement from hearing, through smell, to sight, while the opening refrain holds the three stanzas together as one repeated act of remembering what the poet insists, each time, cannot strictly be remembered. Each pairing of refrain and image repeats the same pattern: a stated loss is immediately softened by a felt, sensory connection, so that by the final stanza the child's whole surrounding world, its sounds, its scents and its open sky, has quietly become a substitute for the direct memory he never had of his mother.
Who is Rabindranath Tagore?
Rabindranath Tagore is the poet of this poem.
The poem, through the voice of a child, evokes memories rooted in sensory experiences, suggesting how presence and absence can coexist through emotional memory.
This framing highlights the poem's central technique: rather than narrating facts about the mother, the poem lets a child's sensory world (sound, smell, sight) stand in for memories he does not consciously possess.
The poet's choice of a child-speaker allows the poem to explore loss and connection with simplicity and emotional honesty, without claiming any certainty about what is remembered or felt, as shown by the repeated hedging words "seems" and "feel" used throughout the three stanzas.
The poem's gentle, meditative tone and its focus on ordinary sensory details, such as flowers, temple scent and the sky, are consistent with the way the poem presents memory as something that lives in feeling and environment rather than in fact.
In the chapter's learning activities, students are asked to research unique Indian flowers in the same spirit as the shiuli flower, which is also known as "Parijat, Parijata, and Harsingar", is "revered and used for various ceremonial purposes", "release[s] a sweet fragrance", is "associated with numerous Indian legends" and "bloom[s] exclusively during the night". This extra detail about the shiuli flower helps explain why Tagore chose it as a symbol tied to temple ritual and to the mother's memory in stanza 2.
The chapter also pairs Tagore's poem with a second poem on a related theme, "I Remember, I Remember" by Thomas Hood, which recalls "the house where I was born" and childhood sights such as "the roses red and white" and "the laburnum", showing a different, more visually detailed way of remembering childhood than Tagore's sense-led, fragmentary approach.
Why does the poet repeat the same opening line in every stanza?
The refrain that opens all three stanzas, admitting that the poet has no memory of his mother, is central to the poem's emotional effect.
By stating the same denial three times, the poet emphasises that his inability to recall his mother directly is not a passing comment but a persistent, defining fact of his experience of her.
Yet directly after each repetition of the refrain, the poet introduces a sensory detail (the tune, the flower scent, the sky) that gently contradicts the denial.
This pattern of statement and contradiction, repeated three times, creates a bittersweet rhythm: the poem keeps asserting loss while simultaneously offering proof of continuing connection.
The refrain also gives the poem its musical, song-like quality despite the absence of rhyme. Each return to the refrain resets the emotional tone of the poem, allowing the next sensory image to feel like a fresh, surprising discovery rather than a continuation of the previous stanza.
Explaining why the poet uses this opening line as a refrain, and not merely spotting it, is a key reading skill for this poem.
Read together with the title, the refrain also frames the whole poem as a kind of gentle argument the poet has with himself: each time he restates the denial, the very next lines show a feeling, a scent or a sight proving that some form of memory, even if not factual, has survived.
This repetition also gives the poem a shape close to a song with a chorus, since a listener hears the same opening words return three times while the surrounding images keep changing, moving from play, to an autumn morning, to the open sky.
How does the poem use the five senses?
The senses are the biological channels, such as hearing, smell and sight, through which humans perceive the world; "olfactory (smell), auditory (hearing), and visual (sight)… are three of the five basic senses in humans."
The poem is built around these three senses in turn. In stanza 1, the auditory sense is used through "the tune of some song that she used to hum while rocking my cradle", which "seems to hover" over the child's playthings.
In stanza 2, the olfactory sense dominates: "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air" during "the early autumn morning", and this is linked to "the scent of the morning service in the temple", which the poet says "comes to me as the scent of my mother".
In stanza 3, the visual sense takes over as the poet looks from his bedroom window "into the blue of the distant sky" and feels that "the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face has spread all over the sky".
By moving through hearing, smell and sight in turn, the poem suggests that the mother's presence reaches the child through every available sensory channel, even though no single memory of her face or voice remains.
This sense-by-sense structure confirms that the poem is deliberately organised, stanza by stanza, around a single dominant sense each time rather than mixing several senses within one stanza.
What is the tone and mood of the poem?
The tone of the poem is gentle, wistful and tender rather than openly sorrowful. The poet does not express grief directly; instead, he uses soft, hesitant words like "seems" and "feel" to describe his sense of his mother's presence, which gives the poem a quiet, reflective quality rather than a mournful one.
The poem's title immediately sets up its central paradox: a statement admitting loss of memory, which the poem then quietly undermines through sensory detail.
This creates a mood in which presence and absence coexist, so that the overall feeling is one of bittersweet comfort rather than pure sadness.
The calm, measured pace created by the repeated refrain and the unhurried movement from play, to morning air, to the open sky, supports a mood of serene acceptance: the poet seems at peace with not remembering his mother directly, because her presence continues to reach him in other ways.
This calm quality is linked specifically to the word "stillness": the emotion suggested by "the stillness of my mother's gaze" is described among the given options as "a sense of serenity", reinforcing that the poem's mood, even in its most emotional moment, remains peaceful rather than distressed.
This matters because a reader expecting an openly mournful poem about losing a mother might misjudge the tone; the poem instead stays deliberately soft and tentative, letting feeling rather than statement carry its emotional weight.
What are the answers to the textbook questions?
What are the answers to the fill-in-the-blanks exercise?
Stanza 1: the poet remembers his mother while he "plays" with his playthings, in "the midst of my play". He remembers the "tune" (the hummed song) but not his mother herself; the setting suggested by "my play" and "playthings" is consistent with an everyday, possibly outdoor, play scene.
Stanza 2: the poet remembers his mother in the "early autumn" morning season, through the smell of "shiuli flowers". The setting is outdoor, since the flower's scent "floats in the air" outside, reaching him from the morning temple service.
Stanza 3: the poet feels that his mother "gazes" at him from the "sky" (described through her "gaze" spreading "all over the sky"). The setting is indoor, since he looks out from "my bedroom window".
What are the answers to the senses table exercise?
Stanza 1 gives an auditory reference: "the tune of some song that she used to hum while rocking my cradle".
Stanza 2 gives an olfactory reference: "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air" and "the scent of the morning service in the temple comes to me as the scent of my mother".
Stanza 3 gives a visual reference: "I send my eyes into the blue of the distant sky" and "the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face has spread all over the sky".
What are the answers to the alliteration, onomatopoeia and imagery exercise?
Two examples of alliteration are "flowers floats" (from "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air") and the repeated "s" sounds in "the stillness... has spread all over the sky". An example of onomatopoeia is "hum", which imitates the soft, wordless sound of the mother's singing.
The poem uses imagery extensively through its sensory details: auditory imagery in the hovering tune, olfactory imagery in the shiuli flowers and temple scent, and visual imagery in the blue sky and the mother's gaze, all building a layered sensory picture of the absent mother.
The poem lacks a fixed rhyme scheme but remains enjoyable because of its gentle rhythm, the musical repetition of the refrain, and the vividness of its images.
The title creates a mood of poignant contradiction, since it announces forgetting while the poem itself keeps proving a felt connection.
The refrain is used because repeating "I cannot remember my mother" at the start of each stanza deepens this contradiction every time, keeping the poem's central emotional tension alive.
The symbols used are the hummed tune (the mother's voice and care), the shiuli flower scent (her gentle, spiritual presence) and the sky (her enduring, watchful gaze).
What are the answers to the critical reflection extracts?
Extract 1: the poet is reminded of his mother during his play. The primary emotion conveyed by "a tune seems to hover over my playthings" is option C, that it activates memories of the mother.
The hovering tune provides an emotional link to her during ordinary playtime. The statement that the poet experiences the tune "only occasionally during playtime" is true, since the poem says "only sometimes in the midst of my play".
He feels his mother's presence even though she is not there because the tune, a sensory trace of her lullaby, surfaces unbidden in his mind.
Extract 2: the stillness of the mother's gaze spreading over the sky suggests option B, that the sky is a symbolic extension of the mother's presence.
The emotion associated with this "stillness" is best described by option D, a sense of serenity, given the calm, peaceful word "stillness".
The statement that the mother's gaze has "a tangible and visual effect on the sky" is true within the poem's imagery, since the poet describes the gaze as having "spread all over the sky".
The purpose of likening the gaze to the sky is to suggest that the mother's loving presence is as vast and all-encompassing as the sky itself.
The tone in this extract is tender and reflective, because the poet describes the feeling calmly, without distress, as something comforting rather than painful.
Answering the further questions: the refrain's emotional impact is to create a bittersweet mood that combines loss with comfort, deepening with each repetition.
The shiuli flowers connect to the mother through their autumn scent, linked to temple worship and, through that, to her memory; the humming tune connects to her directly through the lullaby she once sang while rocking his cradle.
Nature, through flowers, morning air and the sky, plays the role of carrying the mother's presence to the child across all three stanzas.
Overall, the poem suggests that the mother-child bond can remain strong and comforting even without conscious memory, because it survives through sensory and emotional impressions.
What are the answers to the vocabulary-in-context exercise?
Following the example given in the exercise (glowing-visual, hiss-auditory, aroma-olfactory, sticky-tactile), further sensory words can be classified similarly: "crimson" and "vibrant" are visual; "rustle" and "deafening" are auditory; "scent" and "pungent" are olfactory; and "rough" and "fluffy" are tactile, following the same four categories used in the exercise.
Glossary
- Hover — to linger or remain near a place, without settling.
- Hum — to sing a tune softly with the lips closed, without words.
- Cradle — a small bed for a baby, often rocked to soothe it to sleep.
- Shiuli — a fragrant flower, a type of coral jasmine associated with autumn mornings.
- Morning service — rituals conducted in a temple in the morning, often involving incense or flowers.
- Gaze — to look steadily at something or someone for a long time.
- Refrain — a line or group of lines repeated at regular intervals in a poem.
- Symbolism — a literary device in which a tangible object or idea represents a deeper, less literal meaning.
- Olfactory — relating to the sense of smell.
- Auditory — relating to the sense of hearing.
- Visual — relating to the sense of sight.
- Stillness — a state of calm, quiet absence of movement.
- Playthings — toys or objects used for play.
- Alliteration — the repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby words.
- Onomatopoeia — a word that imitates the sound it describes.
Common errors and misconceptions
- Misconception: The poem states clearly that the mother is dead. Correct: the poem never states this directly; it only says the poet cannot remember her, leaving the reason for the lack of memory unstated.
- Misconception: The poet claims certainty about sensing his mother. Correct: the poet consistently uses hedged words like "seems" and "feel", showing these impressions are tentative, not certain.
- Misconception: The poem has a regular rhyme scheme. Correct: the poem is written in free verse with no fixed rhyme scheme; its musical effect comes from the refrain and rhythm.
- Misconception: Each stanza uses more than one sense equally. Correct: each stanza focuses mainly on one dominant sense: hearing in stanza 1, smell in stanza 2, and sight in stanza 3.
- Misconception: The refrain appears only once, at the start of the poem. Correct: the opening line admitting the poet cannot remember his mother is repeated at the start of every one of the three stanzas.
- Misconception: The sky in stanza 3 is simply background scenery. Correct: the sky functions symbolically, representing the spread of the mother's watchful gaze.
Exam-style questions with model answers
Q1. Quote the line in stanza 1 that shows the poet hearing a trace of his mother, and name the sense involved. [2 marks]
- The line is "a tune seems to hover over my playthings", later identified as the tune she used to hum while rocking his cradle.
- The sense involved is the auditory sense, that is, hearing.
Q2. In the line "the stillness of my mother's gaze on my face has spread all over the sky", what does the sky represent? [2 marks]
- The sky represents a symbolic extension of the mother's watchful, loving presence.
- It suggests her gaze is as vast and ever-present as the sky itself.
Q3. Explain, with reference to the lines "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air / the scent of the morning service in the temple / comes to me as the scent of my mother", how the poet connects nature, ritual and memory in stanza 2. [4 marks]
- The autumn morning air carries the scent of shiuli flowers, a natural, seasonal detail.
- This scent is linked to the "morning service" held in a temple, connecting nature to religious ritual.
- The temple scent then becomes, in the poet's mind, "the scent of my mother", linking ritual to personal memory.
- Through this chain, an ordinary sensory experience becomes a private channel for remembering the mother, even without a direct memory of her.
Q4. Identify and explain three symbols used in the poem to represent the poet's mother. [4 marks]
- The hummed tune symbolises the mother's voice and the comfort she gave while rocking his cradle.
- The shiuli flower's scent symbolises her gentle, spiritual presence, linked to temple worship.
- The blue sky symbolises the wide, enduring reach of her gaze and care.
- Together, these symbols show that the mother's presence survives through the senses and nature rather than through direct memory.
Q5. The same opening line, admitting that the poet cannot remember his mother, begins all three stanzas. Explain its effect on the poem, using details from each stanza. [6 marks]
- The refrain repeats the same denial of memory three times, giving the poem a consistent emotional starting point.
- In stanza 1, after the refrain, the poet recalls a tune hovering over his playthings, contradicting the denial through sound.
- In stanza 2, after the refrain, he senses his mother through the scent of shiuli flowers and temple ritual, contradicting the denial through smell.
- In stanza 3, after the refrain, he feels her gaze spread across the sky, contradicting the denial through sight.
- Each repetition resets the poem's tone, letting a fresh sensory image appear as a quiet surprise rather than a continuation.
- Overall, the refrain creates a bittersweet rhythm in which loss is stated but gently undone each time by sensory memory.
Q6. Identify one example each of alliteration and onomatopoeia in the poem, quoting the lines. [3 marks]
- An example of alliteration is "flowers floats" in "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air".
- A further example of alliteration is the repeated "s" sound in "the stillness... has spread all over the sky".
- An example of onomatopoeia is "hum", describing the soft sound of the mother's wordless singing.
Q7. What is the tone of the poem, and why? [2 marks]
- The tone is gentle, wistful and tender rather than openly sorrowful.
- This is shown through hedged, soft words like "seems" and "feel" rather than certain statements of grief.
Key takeaways
- The poem's refrain, admitting that the poet cannot remember his mother, opens all three stanzas and sets up a contradiction between stated forgetting and felt presence.
- Stanza 1 uses the auditory sense: a hummed cradle-song that "seems to hover" over the child's play.
- Stanza 2 uses the olfactory sense: the scent of shiuli flowers and a temple morning service, linked to the mother.
- Stanza 3 uses the visual sense: the mother's gaze imagined as spreading across the sky.
- The poem uses symbolism, turning a tune, a flower scent and the sky into symbols of the mother's presence.
- The poem has no fixed rhyme scheme; it is written in free verse, relying on rhythm and repetition for its musical effect.
- Devices used include alliteration ("flowers floats"), onomatopoeia ("hum") and extensive sensory imagery.
- The central theme is that memory and love can persist through the senses even without conscious, factual recollection.
Test yourself
Which sense dominates stanza 1 of the poem?
Hearing, or the auditory sense, through the hummed tune that seems to hover over the poet's playthings.
What flower is associated with the mother's memory in stanza 2?
The shiuli flower, whose autumn-morning scent reminds the poet of the temple morning service, and through that, of his mother.
What does the poet feel has "spread all over the sky" in stanza 3?
The stillness of his mother's gaze on his face.
Name the refrain used in the poem.
The line admitting he cannot remember his mother, repeated at the start of every stanza.
Give one example of alliteration from the poem.
"Flowers floats", from the line "the smell of the shiuli flowers floats in the air".
What word in the poem is an example of onomatopoeia?
"Hum", which imitates the soft sound of the mother's wordless singing.
Does the poem follow a fixed rhyme scheme?
No, it is written in free verse without a fixed rhyme scheme, relying instead on rhythm and the repeated refrain.
What three symbols represent the mother in the poem?
The hummed tune, the scent of shiuli flowers linked to temple ritual, and the vast blue sky representing her gaze.