Selection of Tagore Poems

13

Little songs and little things come to my mind this morning.
I seem to be floating on a stream in a boat, passing by the world
on both banks.
Every little scene gives a sigh and says, 'I go.'
World's pleasure and pain, like brother and sister, lift their
pathetic eyes upon my face from afar.
Homely love peeps from her cottage corner to give me her passing glance.
With eager eyes I gaze from my heart's window on to the heart of
the world.
And feel that with all its good and bad it is lovable.

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80

Fill your eyes with the colours that ripple
on beauty's stream,
vain is your struggle to clutch them.
That which you chase with your desire is a shadow,
that which thrills your life-chords is music.
The wine they drink at the assembly of gods
has no body, no measure.
It is in rushing brooks,
in flowering trees,
in the smile that dances at the corner of dark eyes.
Enjoy it in freedom.

---

92

Once again I wake up when the night has waned,
when the world opens all its petals once more,
and this is an endless wonder.
Vast islands have sunk in the abyss unnamed,
stars have been beggared of the last flicker of their light,
countless epochs have lost all their ladings.
World-conquerors have vanished into the shadow of a name
behind dim legends,
great nations raised their towers of triumph
as a mere offering to the unappeasable hunger of the dust.
Among this dissolving crowd of the discarded
my forehead receives the consecration of light,
and this is an endless wonder.
I stand for another day with the Himalayas,
with constellations of stars.
I am here where in the surging sea-waves
the infuriate dance of the Terrible
is rhythmed with his boisterous laughter.
The centuries on which have flashed up and foundered
kingly crowns like bubbles
have left their signature on the bark of this aged tree,
where I am allowed to sit under its ancient shade for one more day, and this is an endless wonder.

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Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along sidemillions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-old love
But in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.