Stray Birds, Page 4

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* When night comes I bury my face in my arms and dream that my paper boats float on and on under the midnight stars. The fairies of sleep are sailing in them, and the lading is their baskets full of dreams. - Rabindranath Tagore *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Stray Birds, CCC-CCCXXV
by Rabindranath Tagore



CCC

Let me feel this world as they love taking form, then my love will help it.

CCCI

Thy sunshine smiles upon the winter days of my heart, never doubting of its spring flowers.

CCCII

God kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.

CCCIII

Thou crossest desert lands of barren years to reach the moment of fulfilment.

CCCIV

God's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.

CCCV

Thou wilt find, Eternal Traveller, marks of thy footsteps across my songs.

CCCVI

Let me not shame thee, Father, who displayest thy glory in thy children.

CCCVII

Cheerless is the day, the light under frowning clouds is like a punished child with traces of tears on its pale cheeks, and the cry of the wind is like the cry of a wounded world. But I know I am travelling to meet my Friend.

CCCVIII

To-night there is a stir among the palm leaves, a swell in the sea, Full Moon, like the heart-throb of the world. From what unknown sky hast thou carried in thy silence the aching secret of love?

CCCIX

I dream of a star, an island of light, where I shall be born and in the depth of its quickening leisure my life will ripen its works like the rice-field in the autumn sun.

CCCX

The smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.

CCCXI

That love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.

CCCXII

We shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which our soul has gained, for her gains are one with herself.

CCCXIII

God comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from my past kept fresh in his basket.

CCCXIV

When all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at every touch of thine will come out the music of love.

CCCXV

Let me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.

CCCXVI

Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man.

CCCXVII

I feel thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.

CCCXVIII

I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.

CCCXIX

The prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset, in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.

CCCXX

I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden wisdom.

CCCXXI

Things look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk- the spires whose bases are lost in the dark and tree-tops like blots of ink. I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the light.

CCCXXII

I have suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that I am in this great world.

CCCXXIII

There are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.

CCCXXIV

Release me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind making death difficult.

CCCXXV

Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.

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from The Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore, copyright 1949 by The MacMillan Company.

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