Complete Works. Rabindranath Tagore

are the fingers that have forsaken their past.

      188

      Darkness travels towards light, but blindness towards death.

      189

      The pet dog suspects the universe for scheming to take its place.

      190

      Sit still my heart, do not raise your dust.

       Let the world find its way to you.

      191

      The bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth—"Your freedom is mine."

      192

      Woman, in your laughter you have the music of the fountain of life.

      193

      A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.

       It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

      194

      God loves man's lamp lights better than his own great stars.

      195

      This world is the world of wild storms kept tame with the music of beauty.

      196

      "My heart is like the golden casket of thy kiss," said the sunset cloud to the sun.

      197

      By touching you may kill, by keeping away you may possess.

      198

      The cricket's chirp and the patter of rain come to me through the dark, like the rustle of dreams from my past youth.

      199

      "I have lost my dewdrop," cries the flower to the morning sky that has lost all its stars.

      200

      The burning log bursts in flame and cries,—"This is my flower, my death.

      201

      The wasp thinks that the honey-hive of the neighbouring bees is too small.

       His neighbours ask him to build one still smaller.

      202

      "I cannot keep your waves," says the bank to the river.

       "Let me keep your footprints in my heart."

      203

      The day, with the noise of this little earth, drowns the silence of all worlds.

      204

      The song feels the infinite in the air, the picture in the earth, the poem in the air and the earth;

       For its words have meaning that walks and music that soars.

      205

      When the sun goes down to the West, the East of his morning stands before him in silence.

      206

      Let me not put myself wrongly to my world and set it against me.

      207

      Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

      208

      Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.

      209

      Maiden, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.

      210

      The best does not come alone.

       It comes with the company of the all.

      211

      God's right hand is gentle, but terrible is his left hand.

      212

      My evening came among the alien trees and spoke in a language which my morning stars did not know.

      213

      Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

      214

      Our desire lends the colours of the rainbow to the mere mists and vapours of life.

      215

      God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.

      216

      My sad thoughts tease me asking me their own names.

      217

      The service of the fruit is precious, the service of the flower is sweet, but let my service be the service of the leaves in its shade of humble devotion.

      218

      My heart has spread its sails to the idle winds for the shadowy island of Anywhere.

      219

      Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

      220

      Make me thy cup and let my fulness be for thee and for thine.

      221

      The storm is like the cry of some god in pain whose love the earth refuses.

      222

      The world does not leak because death is not a crack.

      223

      Life has become richer by the love that has been lost.

      224

      My friend, your great heart shone with the sunrise of the East like the snowy summit of a lonely hill in the dawn.

      225

      The fountain of death makes the still water of life play.

      226

      Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.

      227

      The movement of life has its rest in its own music.

      228

      Kicks only raise dust and not crops from the earth.

      229

      Our names are the light that glows on the sea waves at night and then dies without leaving its signature.

      230

      Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.

      231

      Set bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in the sky.

      232

      The same lotus of our clime blooms here in the alien water with the same sweetness, under another name.

      233

      In heart's perspective the distance looms large.

      234

      The moon has her light all over the sky, her dark spots to herself.

      235

      Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.

       See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

      236

      Smoke boasts to the sky, and Ashes to the earth, that they are brothers to the fire.

      237

      The raindrop whispered to the jasmine, "Keep me in your heart for ever."

       The jasmine sighed, "Alas," and dropped to the ground.

      238

      Timid thoughts, do not be afraid of me.

       I am a poet.

      239

      The dim silence of my mind seems filled with crickets' chirp—the grey twilight of sound.

      240

      Rockets, your insult to the stars follows yourself back to the earth.

      241

      Thou