The Complete Poetical Works of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore
poet, O Night, veiled Night!
There are some who have sat speechless for ages in thy shadow; let me utter their songs.
Take me up on thy chariot without wheels, running noiselessly from world to world, thou queen in the palace of time, thou darkly beautiful!
Many a questioning mind has stealthily entered thy courtyard and roamed through thy lampless house seeking for answers.
From many a heart, pierced with the arrow of joy from the hands of the Unknown, have burst forth glad chants, shaking the darkness to its foundation.
Those wakeful souls gaze in the starlight in wonder at the treasure they have suddenly found.
Make me their poet, O Night, the poet of thy fathomless silence.
XXI
I will meet one day the Life within me, the joy that hides in my life, though the days perplex my path with their idle dust.
I have known it in glimpses, and its fitful breath has come upon me, making my thoughts fragrant for a while.
I will meet one day the Joy without me that dwells behind the screen of light—and will stand in the overflowing solitude where all things are seen as by their creator.
XXII
This autumn morning is tired with excess of light, and if your songs grow fitful and languid give me your flute awhile.
I shall but play with it as the whim takes me,—now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips, now keep it by my side on the grass.
But in the solemn evening stillness I shall gather flowers, to deck it with wreaths, I shall fill it with fragrance; I shall worship it with the lighted lamp.
Then at night I shall come to you and give you back your flute.
You will play on it the music of midnight when the lonely crescent moon wanders among the stars.
XXIII
The poet's mind floats and dances on the waves of life amidst the voices of wind and water.
Now when the sun has set and the darkened sky draws upon the sea like drooping lashes upon a weary eye it is time to take away his pen, and let his thoughts sink into the bottom of the deep amid the eternal secret of that silence.
XXIV
The night is dark and your slumber is deep in the hush of my being.
Wake, O Pain of Love, for I know not how to open the door, and I stand outside.
The hours wait, the stars watch, the wind is still, the silence is heavy in my heart.
Wake, Love, wake! brim my empty cup, and with a breath of song ruffle the night.
XXV
The bird of the morning sings.
Whence has he word of the morning before the morning breaks, and when the dragon night still holds the sky in its cold black coils?
Tell me, bird of the morning, how, through the twofold night of the sky and the leaves, he found his way into your dream, the messenger out of the east?
The world did not believe you when you cried, "The sun is on his way, the night is no more."
O sleeper, awake!
Bare your forehead, waiting for the first blessing of light, and sing with the bird of the morning in glad faith.
XXVI
The beggar in me lifted his lean hands to the starless sky and cried into night's ear with his hungry voice.
His prayers were to the blind Darkness who lay like a fallen god in a desolate heaven of lost hopes.
The cry of desire eddied round a chasm of despair, a wailing bird circling its empty nest.
But when morning dropped anchor at the rim of the East, the beggar in me leapt and cried:
"Blessed am I that the deaf night denied me—that its coffer was empty."
He cried, "O Life, O Light, you are precious! and precious is the joy that at last has known you!"
XXVII
Sanâtan was telling his beads by the Ganges when a Brahmin in rags came to him and said, "Help me, I am poor!"
"My alms-bowl is all that is my own," said Sanâtan, "I have given away everything I had."
"But my lord Shiva came to me in my dreams," said the Brahmin, "and counselled me to come to you."
Sanâtan suddenly remembered he had picked up a stone without price among the pebbles on the river-bank, and thinking that some one might need it hid it in the sands.
He pointed out the spot to the Brahmin, who wondering dug up the stone.
The Brahmin sat on the earth and mused alone till the sun went down behind the trees, and cowherds went home with their cattle.
Then he rose and came slowly to Sanâtan and said, "Master, give me the least fraction of the wealth that disdains all the wealth of the world."
And he threw the precious stone into the water.
XXVIII
Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.
You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.
I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks and the hoard of your gifts grew immense, hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation wore my heart out.
Take, oh take—has now become my cry.
Shatter all from this beggar's bowl: put out this lamp of the importunate watcher: hold my hands, raise me from the still-gathering heap of your gifts into the bare infinity of your uncrowded presence.
XXIX
You have set me among those who are defeated.
I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game.
I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom.
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