The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
— Rabindranath Tagore, The Fourfold Way of India (1924)
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, it’s age old pain,
It’s 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 side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the 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.
-Rabindranath Tagore
When I Go Alone at Night
When I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed.
When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly — I do not know how to quiet it.
When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars.
It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do not know how to hide it.
- Rabindranath Tagore (The Gardener 1915)
Hiatus until 12/20
I want to put in a good effort from my finals so as you can already see, I’m not putting in an effort to update this tumblr regularly. I’ll only be on tumblr to update my personal (which I already update randomly) and maybe make a few posts here. Don’t worry, this blog will be up and running in no time. Good luck on your finals or any other task you may have!
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
— Rabindranath Tagore (The Gardener 1915)
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.
— Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali 1912)
Tagore and His India by Amartya Sen
In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore’s writings created in the early years of the twentieth century has largely vanished. The enthusiasm with which his work was once greeted was quite remarkable. Gitanjali, a selection of his poetry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, was published in English translation in London in March of that year, and had been reprinted ten times by November, when the award was announced. But he is not much read now in the West, and already by 1937, Graham Greene was able to say: “As for Rabindranath Tagore, I cannot believe that anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously.”
Click to read more.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
— Rabindranath Tagore (Stray Birds 1915)
