The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore

night, whose presence is known by the dew that drips from it, by the odour shed through the darkness, as the first steps of Spring are by the buds that thicken the twigs.

      You break upon my thought like waves at the high tide, and my heart is drowned under surging songs.

      My heart knew of your coming, as the night feels the approach of dawn. The clouds are aflame and my sky fills with a great revealing flood.

      6

      I was to go away; still she did not speak. But I felt, from a slight quiver, her yearning arms would say: "Ah no, not yet."

      I have often heard her pleading hands vocal in a touch, though they knew not what they said.

      I have known those arms to stammer when, had they not, they would have become youth's garland round my neck.

      Their little gestures return to remembrance in the covert of still hours, like truants they playfully reveal things she had kept secret from me.

      7

      My songs are like bees; they follow through the air some fragrant trace—some memory—of you, to hum around your shyness, eager for its hidden store.

      When the freshness of dawn droops in the sun, when in the noon the air hangs low with heaviness and the forest is silent, my songs return home, their languid wings dusted with gold.

      8

      I believe you had visited me in a vision before we ever met, like some foretaste of April before the spring broke into flower.

      That vision must have come when all was bathed in the odour of sal blossom; when the twilight twinkle of the river fringed its yellow sands, and the vague sounds of a summer afternoon were blended; yes, and had it not laughed and evaded me in many a nameless gleam at other moments?

      9

      I think I shall stop startled if ever we meet after our next birth, walking in the light of a far-away world.

      I shall know those dark eyes then as morning stars, and yet feel that they have belonged to some unremembered evening sky of a former life.

      I shall know that the magic of your face is not all its own, but has stolen the passionate light that was in my eyes at some immemorial meeting, and then gathered from my love a mystery that has now forgotten its origin.

      10

      Lay down your lute, my love, leave your arms free to embrace me.

      Let your touch bring my overflowing heart to my body's utmost brink.

      Do not bend your neck and turn away your face, but offer up a kiss to me, which has been like some perfume long closed in a bud.

      Do not smother this moment under vain words, but let our hearts quake in a rush of silence sweeping all thoughts to the shoreless delight.

      11

      You have made me great with your love, though I am but one among the many, drifting in the common tide, rocking in the fluctuant favour of the world.

      You have given me a seat where poets of all time bring their tribute, and lovers with deathless names greet one another across the ages.

      Men hastily pass me in the market,—never noting how my body has grown precious with your caress, how I carry your kiss within, as the sun carries in its orb the fire of the divine touch and shines for ever.

      12

      Like a child that frets and pushes away its toys, my heart to-day shakes its head at every phrase I suggest, and says, "No, not this."

      Yet words, in the agony of their vagueness, haunt my mind, like vagrant clouds hovering over hills, waiting for some chance wind to relieve them of their rain.

      But leave these vain efforts, my soul, for the stillness will ripen its own music in the dark.

      My life to-day is like a cloister during some penance, where the spring is afraid to stir or to whisper.

      This is not the time, my love, for you to pass the gate; at the mere thought of your anklet bells tinkling down the path, the garden echoes are ashamed.

      Know that to-morrow's songs are in bud to-day, and should they see you walk by they would strain to breaking their immature hearts.

      13

      Whence do you bring this disquiet, my love?

      Let my heart touch yours and kiss the pain out of your silence.

      The night has thrown up from its depth this little hour, that love may build a new world within these shut doors, to be lighted by this solitary lamp.

      We have for music but a single reed which our two pairs of lips must play on by turns—for crown, only one garland to bind my hair after I have put it on your forehead.

      Tearing the veil from my breast I shall make our bed on the floor; and one kiss and one sleep of delight shall fill our small boundless world.

      14

      All that I had I gave to you, keeping but the barest veil of reserve.

      It is so thin that you secretly smile at it and I feel ashamed.

      The gust of the spring breeze sweeps it away unawares, and the flutter of my own heart moves it as the waves move their foam.

      My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.

      This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent grace.

      15

      I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.

      It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh offering, dressed in a new robe?

      My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young grass and now that of the winter rice.

      To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.

      16

      I thought I would write love's words in their own colour; but that lies deep in the heart, and tears are pale.

      Would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless?

      I thought I would sing love's words to their own tune, but that sounds only in my heart, and my eyes are silent.

      Would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?

      17

      In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.

      It found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the words hung back, when you were beside me.

      18

      The night deepens and the dying flame flickers in the lamp.

      I forgot to notice when the evening—like a village girl who has filled her pitcher at the river a last time for that day—closed the door on her cabin.

      I was speaking to you, my love, with mind barely conscious of my voice—tell me, had it any meaning? Did it bring you any message from beyond life's borders?

      For now, since my voice has ceased, I feel the night throbbing with thoughts that gaze in awe at the abyss of their dumbness.

      19

      When we two first met my heart rang out