The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore

the grass its service to the earth.

      The sun's kiss mellows into abandonment

       the miserliness of the green fruit clinging to its stem.

      The flame met the earthen lamp in me,

       and what a great marvel of light!

      Mistakes live in the neighbourhood of truth

       and therefore delude us.

      The cloud laughed at the rainbow

       saying that is was an upstart

       gaudy in its emptiness.

       The rainbow calmly answered,

       "I am as inevitably real as that sun himself."

      Let me not grope in vain in the dark

       but keep my mind still in the faith

       that the day will break

       and truth will appear

       in its simplicity.

      Through the silent night

       I hear the returning vagrant hopes of the morning

       knock at my heart.

      My new love comes

       bringing to me the eternal wealth of the old.

      The earth gazes at the moon and wonders

       that she should have all her music in her smile.

      Day with its glare of curiosity

       puts the stars to flight.

      My mind has its true union with thee, O sky,

       at the window which is mine own,

       and not in the open

       where thou hast thy sole kingdom.

      Man claims God's flowers as his own

       when he weaves them in a garland.

      The buried city, laid bare to the sun of a new age,

       is ashamed that it has lost all its songs.

      Like my heart's pain that has long missed its meaning,

       the sun's rays robed in dark

       hide themselves under the ground.

      Like my heart's pain at love's sudden touch,

       they change their veil at the spring's call

       and come out in the carnival of colours,

       in flowers and leaves.

      My life's empty flute

       waits for its final music

       like the primal darkness

       before the stars came out.

      Emancipation from the bondage of the soil

       is no freedom for the tree.

      The tapestry of life's story is woven

       with the threads of life's ties

       ever joining and breaking.

      Those thoughts of mine that are never captured by words

       perch upon my songs and dance.

      My soul to-night loses itself

       in the silent heart of a tree

       standing alone among the whispers of immensity.

      Pearl shells cast up by the sea

       on death's barren beach,—

       a magnificent wastefulness of creative life.

      The sunlight opens for me the world's gate,

       love's light its treasure.

      My life like the reed with its stops,

       has its play of colours

       through the gaps in its hopes and gains.

      Let not my thanks to thee

       rob my silence of its fuller homage.

      Life's aspirations come

       in the guise of children.

      The faded flower sighs

       that the spring has vanished for ever.

      In my life's garden

       my wealth has been of the shadows and lights

       that are never gathered and stored.

      The fruit that I Have gained for ever

       is that which thou hast accepted.

      The jasmine knows the sun to be her brother

       in the heaven.

      Light is young, the ancient light;

       shadows are of the moment, they are born old.

      I feel that the ferry of my songs at the day's end

       will bring me across to the other shore

       from where I shall see.

      The butterfly flitting from flower to flower

       ever remains mine,

       I lose the one that is netted by me.

      Your voice, free bird, reaches my sleeping nest,

       and my drowsy wings dream

       of a voyage to the light

       above the clouds.

      I miss the meaning of my own part

       in the play of life

       because I know not of the parts

       that others play.

      The flower sheds all its petals

       and finds the fruit.

      I leave my songs behind me

       to the bloom of the ever-returning honeysuckles

       and the joy of the wind from the south.

      Dead leaves when they lose themselves in soil

       take part in the life of the forest.

      The mind ever seeks its words

       from its sounds and silence

       as the sky from its darkness and light.

      The unseen dark plays on his flute

       and the rhythm of light

       eddies into stars and suns,

       into thoughts and dreams.

      My songs are to sing

       that I have loved Thy singing.

      When the voice of the Silent touches my words

       I know him and therefore I know myself.

      My last salutations are to them

       who knew me imperfect and loved me.

      Love's gift cannot be given,

       it waits to be accepted.

      When death comes and whispers to me,

       "Thy days are ended,"

       let me say to him, "I have lived in love

       and not in mere time."

       He will ask, "Will thy songs remain?"

       I shall say, "I know not, but this I know

       that often when I sang I found my eternity."

      "Let me light my lamp,"

       say the star,

       'and never debate

       if it will help to remove the darkness."

      Before the end of my journey

       may I reach within myself

       the one which is the all,

       leaving the outer shell