Topic: Rabindranath Tagore

[Jennifer-]

My Song
by Rabindranath Tagore

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.

[Jennifer-]

The First Jasmines
by Rabindranath Tagore

AH, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands
with these jasmines, these white jasmines.

I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the river
through the darkness of midnight;
Autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of the road
in the lonely waste, like a bride raising her veil
to accept her lover.
Yet my memory is still sweet with the first white jasmines
that I held in my hands when I was a child.

Many a glad day has come in my life,
and I have laughed with merrymakers on festival nights.

On grey mornings of rain
I have crooned many an idle song.

I have worn round my neck the evening wreath of
BAKULAS woven by the hand of love.

Yet my heart is sweet with the memory of the first fresh jasmines
that filled my hands when I was a child.

[Jennifer-]

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.
Rabindranath Tagore

[Jennifer-]

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Rabindranath Tagore

[Michael]

[erik]

 

[Jennifer-]

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.

-=-

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

-=-

In our desire for eternal life we pray for an eternity of our habit and comfort, forgetting that immortality is in repeatedly transcending the definite forms of life in order to pursue the infinite truth of life.

-=-

In the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.

-=-

In the night we stumble over things and become acutely conscious of their separateness, but the day reveals the unity which embraces them. And the man whose inner vision is bathed in consciousness at once realizes the spiritual unity which reigns over all racial differences, and his mind no longer stumbles over individual facts, accepting them as final. He realizes that peace is an inner harmony and not an outer adjustment, that beauty carries the assurance of our relationship to reality, which waits for its perfection in the response of our love.

-=-

Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization.

-=-

Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it runs.

-=-

That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

[Jennifer-]

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

[Jennifer-]

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

[Jennifer-]

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

[Jennifer-]

[Jennifer-]

Light, oh where is the light?
Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!
There is the lamp but never a flicker of a flame---is such thy fate, my heart?
Ah, death were better by far for thee!

Misery knocks at thy door,
and her message is that thy lord is wakeful,
and he calls thee to the love-tryst through the darkness of night.
The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless.

I know not what this is that stirs in me---I know not its meaning.
A moment's flash of lightning drags down a deeper gloom on my sight,
and my heart gropes for the path to where the music of the night calls me.
Light, oh where is the light!
Kindle it with the burning fire of desire!

It thunders and the wind rushes screaming through the void.
The night is black as a black stone.
Let not the hours pass by in the dark.
Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

[Jennifer-]

Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore









Benediction
by Rabindranath Tagore
(This poem is from 'The Crescent Moon' by Tagore)

Bless this little heart, this white soul that has
won the kiss of heaven for our earth.

He loves the light of the sun,
he loves the sight of his mother's face.

He has not learned to despise the dust,
and to hanker after gold.

Clasp him to your heart and bless him.
He has come into this land of an hundred crossroads.

I know not how he chose you from the crowd,
came to your door, and grasped your hand
to ask his way.

He will follow you, laughing and talking,
and not a doubt in his heart.
Keep his trust, lead him straight and bless him.

Lay your hand on his head, and pray
that though the waves underneath grow threatening,
yet the breath from above may come and
fill his sails and
waft him to the heaven of peace.

[nichi]

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked
in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death,
in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
Is it beyond thee to be glad with the gladness of this rhythm?
to be tossed and lost and broken in the whirl of this fearful joy?
All things rush on, they stop not, they look not behind,
no power can hold them back, they rush on.
Keeping steps with that restless, rapid music,
seasons come dancing and pass away --
colours, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades
in the abounding joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment.
That I should make much of myself and turn it on all sides,
thus casting coloured shadows on thy radiance --
such is thy maya.

~Rabindranath Tagore

[Michael]

beautiful - he was a very unique being