The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore

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 of some other world, "I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man."

      292

      Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

      293

      Truth raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds broadcast.

      294

      The storm of the last night has crowned this morning with golden peace.

      295

      Truth seems to come with its final word; and the final word gives birth to its next.

      296

      Blessed is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.

      297

      Sweetness of thy name fills my heart when I forget mine— like thy morning sun when the mist is melted.

      298

      The silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous day

      299

      The world loved man when he smiled.

       The world became afraid of him when he laughed.

      300

      God waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.

      301

      Let me feel this world as thy love taking form, then my love will help it.

      302

      Thy sunshine smiles upon the winter days of my heart, never doubting of its spring flowers.

      303

      God kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.

      304

      Thou Grossest desert lands of barren years to reach the moment of fulfilment.

      305

      God's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.

      306

      Thou wilt find, Eternal Traveller, marks of thy footsteps across my songs.

      307

      Let me not shame thee. Father, who displayest thy glory in thy children.

      308

      Cheerless is the day, the light under frowning clouds is like a punished child with traces of tears on its pale cheeks, and the cry of the wind is like the cry of a wounded world. But I know I am travelling to meet my Friend.

      309

      To-night there is a stir among the palm leaves, a swell in the sea, Full Moon, like the heart throb of the world. From what unknown sky hast thou carried in thy silence the aching secret of love?

      310

      I dream of a star, an island of light, where I shall be born and in the depth of its quickening leisure my life will ripen its works like the ricefield in the autumn sun.

      311

      The smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.

      312

      That love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.

      313

      We shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which our soul has gained, for her gains are one

      314

      God comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from my past kept fresh in his basket.

      315

      When all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at every touch of thine will come out the music of love.

      316

      Let me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.

      317

      Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man.

      318

      I fell thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.

      319

      I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.

      320

      The prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset, in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.

      321

      I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden wisdom.

      322

      Things look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk—the spires whose bases are lost in the dark and tree tops like blots of ink. I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the light.

      323

      I have suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that I am in this great world.

      324

      There are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.

      325

      Release me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind making death difficult.

      326

      Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.

      LOVER'S GIFT AND CROSSING

       Table of Contents

       Lover’s Gift

       A Posy

       The Child

       Champa

       Crossing

      LOVER’S GIFT

       Table of Contents

      1

      You allowed your kingly power to vanish, Shajahan, but your wish was to make imperishable a tear-drop of love.

      Time has no pity for the human heart, he laughs at its sad struggle to remember.

      You allured him with beauty, made him captive, and crowned the formless death with fadeless form.

      The secret whispered in the hush of night to the ear of your love is wrought in the perpetual silence of stone.

      Though empires crumble to dust, and centuries are lost in shadows, the marble still sighs to the stars, “I remember.”

      “I remember.”—But life forgets, for she has her call to the Endless: and she goes on her voyage unburdened, leaving her memories to the forlorn forms of beauty.

      2

      Come to my garden walk, my love. Pass by the fervid flowers