Complete Works. Rabindranath Tagore

hast led me through my crowded travels of the day to my evening's loneliness.

       I wait for its meaning through the stillness of the night.

      242

      This life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship.

       In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.

      243

      The stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.

      244

      My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

      245

      The bird-song is the echo of the morning light back from the earth.

      246

      "Are you too proud to kiss me?" the morning light asks the buttercup.

      247

      "How may I sing to thee and worship, O Sun?" asked the little flower.

       "By the simple silence of thy purity," answered the sun.

      248

      Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal.

      249

      Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

      250

      Let not the sword-blade mock its handle for being blunt.

      251

      The night's silence, like a deep lamp, is burning with the light of its milky-way.

      252

      Around the sunny island of Life swells day and night death's limitless song of the sea.

      253

      Is not this mountain like a flower, with its petals of hills, drinking the sunlight?

      254

      The real with its meaning read wrong and emphasis misplaced is the unreal.

      255

      Find your beauty, my heart, from the world's movement, like the boat that has the grace of the wind and the water.

      256

      The eyes are not proud of their sight but of their eyeglasses.

      257

      I live in this little world of mine and am afraid to make it the least less. Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom gladly to lose my all.

      258

      The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

      259

      My heart, with its lapping waves of song, longs to caress this green world of the sunny day.

      260

      Wayside grass, love the star, then your dreams will come out in flowers.

      261

      Let your music, like a sword, pierce the noise of the market to its heart.

      262

      The trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers of an infant child.

      263

      This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.

       It waits to be lifted in the night.

      264

      The little flower lies in the dust.

       It sought the path of the butterfly.

      265

      I am in the world of the roads.

       The night comes. Open thy gate, thou world of the home.

      266

      I have sung the songs of thy day.

       In the evening let me carry thy lamp through the stormy path.

      267

      I do not ask thee into the house.

       Come into my infinite loneliness, my Lover.

      268

      Death belongs to life as birth does.

       The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

      269

      I have learnt the simple meaning of thy whispers in flowers and sunshine—teach me to know thy words in pain and death.

      270

      The night's flower was late when the morning kissed her, she shivered and sighed and dropped to the ground.

      271

      Through the sadness of all things I hear the crooning of the Eternal Mother.

      272

      I came to your shore as a stranger, I lived in your house as a guest, I leave your door as a friend, my earth.

      273

      Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

      274

      Light in my heart the evening star of rest and then let the night whisper to me of love.

      275

      I am a child in the dark.

       I stretch my hands through the coverlet of night for thee. Mother.

      276

      The day of work is done. Hide my face in your arms, Mother.

       Let me dream.

      277

      The lamp of meeting burns long ; it goes out in a moment at the parting.

      278

      One word keep for me in thy silence, O World, when I am dead, "I have loved."

      279

      We live in this world when we love it.

      280

      Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

      281

      I have seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.

      282

      I shall die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.

      283

      While I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.

      284

      Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

      285

      They light their own lamps and sing their own words in their temples.

       But the birds sing thy name in thine own morning light,—for thy name is joy.

      286

      Lead me in the centre of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.

      287

      Let them live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks.

       My heart longs for thy stars, my God.

      288

      Love's pain sang round my life like the unplumbed sea, and love's joy sang like birds in its flowering groves.

      289

      Put out the lamp when thou wishest.

       I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.

      290

      When I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

      291

      Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise