Tagore Poems

Death
O thou the last fulfilment of life,
Death, my death, come and whisper to me!
Day after day I have kept watch for thee;
for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.
All that I am, that I have, that I hope and all my love
have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy.
One final glance from thine eyes
and my life will be ever thine own.
The flowers have been woven
and the garland is ready for the bridegroom.
After the wedding the bride shall leave her home
and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.

First Kiss
The skies lowered their eyes and grew silent.
The birds ceased to sing.
The wind dropped, rippling waters stilled at
    once and forest murmurs faded in the heart
    of the forest.
The horizon came down on the silent earth
    along the lonely bank of the silent river in
    the still shadow of the evening.
At that instant, at the solitary silent window
    we kissed each other for the first time.
All at once evening bells rang out in the
    temple and filled the sky.
The eternal stars shivered and our eyes filled
    with tears.

Farewell
It is time for the bird to leave. Soon the forest winds shall
scatter to the ground the nest bereft, shaken and songless.
    With the dried leaves and flowers, I shall be swept away at
the day’s end to the pathless wastes of space beyond the setting
sun.
    For ages this friendly earth has been my home. I have
heard the call of spring full of gracious gifts and sweet with
mango buds. The Ashoka blooms have yearned for my songs and
I have filled them with my love. Sometime Vaisakh storms have
raged, the warm dust has choked my voice and crippled my
wings.
    Blessed am I in all this. Life’s honour has been mine.
    When my tired journey here will be over, I shall look back
once and leave an humble salute as my last homage to the Lord
of Life.

A Hundred Years from Today / 1996*
Who are you reading curiously this poem of mine
a hundred years from now?
Shall I be able to send to you
    – steeped in the love of my heart –
the faintest touch of this spring morning’s joy,
the scent of a flower,
a bird-song’s note,
a spark of today’s blaze of colour
a hundred years from now?

Yet, for once, open your window on the south
and from your balcony
gaze at the far horizon.
Then, sinking deep in fancy
think of the floating down
from some far heaven of bliss
to touch the heart of the world
a hundred years ago;
think of the young spring day
wild, impetuous and free;
and of the south wind
- fragrant with the pollen of flowers –
rushing on restless wings to paint the earth
with the radiant hues of youth
a hundred years before your day.

And think, how his heart aflame,
his whole being rapt in song,
a poet was awake that day
to unfold like flowers
his myriad thoughts
with what wealth of love! -
one morning a hundred years ago.

A hundred years from now
who is the new poet singing his songs to you?
Across the years I send him
the joyous greeting of this spring.
May my song echo for a while,
on your spring day,
in the beating of your heart,
in the murmur of bees,
in the rustling of leaves, -
a hundred years from today.
*This poem is known by both these names – it was written in 1896.


Gitanjali 95
I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the
threshold of this life.
    What was the power that made me open out into this
vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight!
    When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in
a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the
inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms
in the form of my own mother.
     Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever
known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love
death as well.
    The child cries out when from the right breast the mother
takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its
consolation.

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
     This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
     At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
     Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.
My Polar Star
I have made You the polar star of my
existence; never again can I lose my way in the
voyage of life.
    Wherever I go, You are always there to
shower your benefience all around me. Your face
is ever present before my mind's eyes.
    If I lose sight of You even for a moment, I
almost lose my mind.
    Whenever my heart is about to go astray, just
a glance of You makes it feel ashamed of itself.
~Rabindranath Tagore

The Kiss
Lips' language to lips' ears.
Two drinking each other's heart, it seems.
Two roving loves who have left home,
pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each other
meet at last at the body's limits.
Love's writing a song in dainty letters,
layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lips
perhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lips
is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.
~Rabindranath Tagore

Hard Times
Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.
It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls
Of an ocean's drowsy booming,
Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.
Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?
Where the nest and the branch's hold?
Still, O bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.
Stretching in front of you the night's immensity
Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;
Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming
Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon
Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.
--But O my bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.
From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers
Intently watch your course and death's impatience
Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves ;
And sad entreaties line the farthest shore
With hands outstretched and crooning ' Come, O come ! '
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.
All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes ;
All that is lost: your words and lamentation ;
No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers.
For wings are all you have, and the sky's broadening countryard,
And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction.
Dear bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings!
   (translation Buddhadeva Bose)
~Rabindranath Tagore

Lord of My Life
Thou who art the innermost Spirit of my being,
art thou pleased, Lord of my Life?
For I give to thee my cup filled with all
the pain and delight that the crushed
grapes of my heart had surrendered,
I wove with rhythm of colors and song cover for thy bed,
And with the molten gold of my desires
I fashioned playthings for thy passing hours.
I know not why thou chosest me for thy partner,
Lord of my life.
Didst thou store my days and nights,
my deeds and dreams for the alchemy of thy art,
and string in the chain of thy music my songs of autumn and spring,
and gather the flowers from my mature moments for thy crown?
I see thine eyes gazing at the dark of my heart,
Lord of my life,
I wonder if my failure and wrongs are forgiven.
For many were my days without service
and nights of forgetfulness; futile were the flowers
that faded in the shade not offered to thee.
Often the tied strings of my lute slackened
at the strains of thy tunes.
And often at the ruin of wasted hours
my desolate evenings were filled with tears.
But have my days come to their end at last,
Lord of my life, while my arms round thee
grow limp, my kisses losing their truth?
Then break up the meeting of this languid day!*
Renew the old in me in fresh forms of delight;
and let the wedding come once again in
a new ceremony of life.
~Rabindranath Tagore

Waiting
The song I came to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing
and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true,
the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony
of wishing in my heart.....
I have not seen his face,
nor have I listened to his voice;
only I have heard his gentle footsteps
from the road before my house.....
But the lamp has not been lit
and I cannot ask him into my house;
I live in the hope of meeting with him;
but this meeting is not yet.  
~Rabindranath Tagore

The Sun of the First Day
The sun of the first day
Put the question
To the new manifestation of life-
Who are you?
There was no answer.
Years passed by.
The last sun of the last day
Uttered the question
on the shore of the western sea
In the hush of evening-
Who are you?
No answer came again.
~Rabindranath Tagore

My Song
This song of mine will wind its music around you,
my child, like the fond arms of love.
The song of mine will touch your forehead
like a kiss of blessing.
When you are alone it will sit by your side and
whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd
it will fence you about with aloofness.
My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,
it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.
It will be like the faithful star overhead
when dark night is over your road.
My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,
and will carry your sight into the heart of things.
And when my voice is silenced in death,
my song will speak in your living heart.
~Rabindranath Tagore

Fireflies
I touch God in my song
    as the hill touches the far-away sea
      with its waterfall.
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
    and has time enough.
Let my love, like sunlight, surround you
    and yet give you illumined freedom.
Love remains a secret even when spoken,
    for only a lover truly knows that he is loved.
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
    is no freedom for the tree.
In love I pay my endless debt to thee
    for what thou art.
~Rabindranath Tagore

On the Nature of Love
The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom - of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith - that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
for your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who came close and moved off
in the darkness - I don't know if they exist or not.
~Rabindranath Tagore

One Day in Spring...
One day in spring, a woman came
In my lonely woods,
In the lovely form of the Beloved.
Came, to give to my songs, melodies,
To give to my dreams, sweetness.
Suddenly a wild wave
Broke over my heart's shores
And drowned all language.
To my lips no name came,
She stood beneath the tree, turned,
Glanced at my face, made sad with pain,
And with quick steps, came and sat by me.
Taking my hands in hers, she said:
'You do not know me, nor I you--
I wonder how this could be?'
I said:
'We two shall build, a bridge for ever
Between two beings, each to the other unknown,
This eager wonder is at the heart of things.'
The cry that is in my heart is also the cry of her heart;
The thread with which she binds me binds her too.
Her have I sought everywhere,
Her have I worshipped within me,
Hidden in that worship she has sought me too.
Crossing the wide oceans, she came to steal my heart.
She forgot to return, having lost her own.
Her own charms play traitor to her,
She spreads her net, knowing not
Whether she will catch or be caught.
~Rabindranath Tagore

I
I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the Iffe of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.
~Rabindranath Tagore