The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore

plays her lute before the gate of darkness,

       and is content to vanish when the sun comes out.

      Beauty is truth's smile

       when she beholds her own face

       in a perfect mirror.

      The dew-drop knows the sun

       only within its own tiny orb.

      Forlorn thoughts from the forsaken hives of all ages,

       swarming in the air, hum round my heart

       and seek my voice.

      The desert is imprisoned in the wall

       of its unbounded barrenness.

      In the thrill of little leaves

       I see the air's invisible dance,

       and in their glimmering

       the secret heart-beats of the sky.

      You are like a flowering tree,

       amazed when I praise you for your gifts.

      The earth's sacrifical fire

       flames up in her trees,

       scattering sparks in flowers.

      Forests, the clouds of earth,

       hold their silence up to the sky ,

       and clouds from above come down

       in resonant showers.

      The world speaks to me in pictures,

       my soul answers in music.

      The sky tells its beads all night

       on the countless stars

       in memory of the sun.

      The darkness of night, like pain, is dumb,

       the darkness of dawn, like peace, is silent.

      Pride engraves his frowns in stones,

       love offers her surrender in flowers.

      The obsequious brush curtails truth

       in difference to the canvas which is narrow.

      The hill in its longing for the far-away sky

       wishes to be like the cloud

       with its endless urge of seeking.

      To justify their own spilling of ink

       they spell the day as night.

      Profit smiles on goodness

       when the good is profitable.

      In its swelling pride

       the bubble doubts the truth of the sea,

       and laughs and bursts into emptiness.

      Love is an endless mystery,

       for it has nothing else to explain it.

      My clouds, sorrowing in the dark,

       forget that they themselves

       have hidden the sun.

      Man discovers his own wealth

       when God comes to ask gifts of him.

      You leave your memory as a flame

       to my lonely lamp of separation.

      I came to offer thee a flower,

       but thou must have all my garden,—

       It is thine.

      The picture—a memory of light

       treasured by the shadow.

      It is easy to make faces at the sun,

       He is exposed by his own light in all

       directions.

      Love remains a secret even when spoken,

       for only a lover truly knows that he is loved.

      History slowly smothers its truth,

       but hastily struggles to revive it

       in the terrible penance of pain.

      My work is rewarded in daily wages,

       I wait for my final value in love.

      Beauty knows to say, "Enough,"

       barbarism clamours for still more.

      God loves to see in me, not his servant,

       but himself who serves all.

      The darkness of night is in harmony with day,

       the morning of mist is discordant.

      In the bounteous time of roses love is wine,—

       it is food in the famished hour

       when their petals are shed.

      An unknown flower in a strange land

       speaks to the poet:

       "Are we not of the same soil, my love?"

      I am able to love my God

       because He gives me freedom to deny Him.

      My untuned strings beg for music

       in their anguished cry of shame.

      The worm thinks it strange and foolish

       that man does not eat his books.

      The clouded sky to-day bears the vision

       of the shadow of a divine sadness

       on the forehead of brooding eternity.

      The shade of my tree is for passers-by,

       its fruit for the one for whom I wait.

      Flushed with the glow of sunset

       earth seems like a ripe fruit

       ready to be harvested by night.

      Light accepts darkness for his spouse

       for the sake of creation.

      The reed waits for his master's breath,

       the Master goes seeking for his reed.

      To the blind pen the hand that writes is unreal,

       its writing unmeaning.

      The sea smites his own barren breast

       because he has no flowers to offer to the moon.

      The greed for fruit misses the flower.

      God in His temple of stars

       waits for man to bring him his lamp.

      The fire restrained in the tree fashions flowers.

      Released from bonds, the shameless flame

       dies in barren ashes.

      The sky sets no snare to capture the moon,

       it is her own freedom which binds her.

      The light that fills the sky

       seeks its limit in a dew-drop on the grass.

      Wealth is the burden of bigness,

       Welfare the fullness of being.

      The razor-blade is proud of its keenness

       when it sneers at the sun.

      The butterfly has leisure to love the lotus,

       not the bee busily storing honey.

      Child, thou bring to my heart

       the babble of the wind and the water,

       the flower's speechless secrets, the clouds' dreams,

       the mute gaze of wonder of the morning sky.

      The rainbow among the clouds may be great

       but the little butterfly among the bushes is greater.

      The mist weaves her