Tagore Poem

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

On the Seashore

1On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

2The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

3They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

4They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

5The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

6On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

The Child

(excerpt)

1The first flush of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest.

2The man who reads the sky cries:

3 "Friends, we have come!"

4They stop and look around.

5 On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon,

6 -- the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light.

7The current of daily life moves slowly

8 between the village near the hill and the one by the river bank.

9The potter's wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market,

10 the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture,

11 and the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well.

12But where is the King's castle, the mine of gold,

13 the secret book of magic,

14 the sage who knows love's utter wisdom?

15"The stars cannot be wrong," assures the reader of the sky.

16"Their signal points to that spot."

17And reverently he walks to a wayside spring

18from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light, like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter

19Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-thatched hut

20at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings:

21 "Mother, open the gate!"

22A ray of morning sun strikes aslant at the door.

23The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval chant of creation:

24 "Mother, open the gate!"

25The gate opens.

26The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap,

27 Like the dawn with the morning star.

28The sun's ray that was waiting at the door outside falls on the head of the child.

29The poet strikes his lute and sings out:

30 "Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living!"

31They kneel down, -- the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner,

32 the wise and the fool, -- and cry:

33 "Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living!"

34The old man from the East murmurs to himself:

35 "I have seen!"

The Last Bargain

1"Come and hire me," I cried, while in the morning I was walking on the stone-paved road.

2Sword in hand, the King came in his chariot.

3He held my hand and said, "I will hire you with my power."

4But his power counted for nought, and he went away in his chariot.

5In the heat of the midday the houses stood with shut doors.

6I wandered along the crooked lane.

7An old man came out with his bag of gold.

8He pondered and said, "I will hire you with my money."

9He weighed his coins one by one, but I turned away.

10It was evening. The garden hedge was all aflower.

11The fair maid came out and said, "I will hire you with a smile."

12Her smile paled and melted into tears, and she went back alone into the dark.

13The sun glistened on the sand, and the sea waves broke waywardly.

14A child sat playing with shells.

15He raised his head and seemed to know me, and said, "I hire you with nothing."

16From thenceforward that bargain struck in child's play made me a free man.

The Gardener 85

1Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?

2I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

3Open your doors and look abroad.

4From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

5In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years

The Gardener 38

1My love, once upon a time your poet launched a great epic in his mind.

2Alas, I was not careful, and it struck your ringing anklets and came to grief.

3It broke up into scraps of songs and lay scattered at your feet.

4All my cargo of the stories of old wars was tossed by the laughing waves and soaked in tears and sank.

5You must make this loss good to me, my love.

6If my claims to immortal fame after death are shattered, make me immortal while I live.

7And I will not mourn for my loss nor blame you.

Gitanjali 35

1Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

2Where knowledge is free;

3Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

4Where words come out from the depth of truth;

5Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

6Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

7Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action --

8Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.