happiness and fulfillment.  Tagore's poem, written in free verse, employs first person narration.  The narrator is a boy who observes different people at work during his day.

In each worker, the narrator finds something pleasing and envies the worker. These are his perceptions of each occupation:

Before school, the hawker (street vendor)= sells jewelry; no time frame; does not have to travel

After school, the gardener=allowed to do all the things a boy loves; gets dirty and wet; uses a shovel; no one tells him what to do

At night in bed, the watchman= walks the streets with only his shadow following along; carries a lantern; never has to go to bed

Failing to realize that his education will provide him with many opportunities, the young boy values only freedomwithout authority.  Foolishly, the boy does not see the hardships that each worker faces.

The hawker yells all day, standing in the same spot trying to sell cheap jewelry.  Undoubtedly his work is boring and unsatisfying.

The gardener, possibly working for someone else, spends hours doing backbreaking work.  His job is dirty and wet and his hands are calloused from using gardening tools.

The watchman walks all night without sleep.  He must carry a lantern.  The streets are shadowy, desolate, and lonely.  

The perceptions of the boy are obviously childish.  Unaware of his possibilties for the future, he sees excitement and fun in these tedious jobs held by men who probably find little fulfillment in their work.  Hopefully, time and maturity will enable the boy to find his vocation through his education and commitment to a profession.  

To write a detailed summary, whether it is of a poem, a chapter, an essay, or a book, we want to fist pick out the important details in the piece. It may be a little more difficult to summarize a poem as we must first understand the meaning and theme/themes of the poem, but not impossible. Below are a few ideas to help get you started.

Let's take a look at the first line as it is actually very revealing about the content of the poem: "When the gong sounds ten in the mourning and I walk to school by our lane." What does this one line tell you about the main speaker/character of the poem? We know that the speaker is walking to school; hence, the speaker must be school-aged, right? The image of the gong sounding also paints a very revealing image. Where could the speaker be that a gong sounds in the morning? The speaker is certainly not in the US. But if we look at the poet's biography, we learn that Rabindranath Tagore was from Calcutta, now spelled Kolkata, India; hence, we can deduce that the speaker is school-aged and also lives in Calcutta, just like the poet. It may even be fair to say that the speaker is a reflection of the poet. Therefore, from just this one line, we can summarize that the poem is about a school-aged boy or girl who lives in Calcutta.

The next line is also important as it establishes the poem's whole underlying theme. The next thing the speaker describes is a "hawker," meaning a street vendor, who is calling out his wares, which happens to be "crystal bangles." The speaker sees the street vendor's liberty as he has "no place he must go to," like school, and no one demanding that he come home. Due to what the school-aged speaker imagines is the street vendor's liberty, the speaker imagines that he wishes he was a street vendor rather than a school-aged boy or girl. Throughout the rest of the poem, the speaker makes similar comments about the liberty of other grown ups he or she sees, like the gardener and the night watchmen. Hence, all in all, this poem reflects on a young person's eagerness to grow up, get a vocation, and experience what he or she perceives to be an adult's freedom. So if you were to continue to summarize the poem, you would continue to describe all of the vocations the speaker observes and how he or she sees the adults with these vocations as having more freedom than a school-aged person.