Stray Birds - Rabindranath Tagore (classic novels to read TXT) 📗

time in a forgotten tongue. 117

THE grass-blade is worth of the great world where it grows.

118

DREAM is a wife who must talk.

Sleep is a husband who silently suffers.

119

THE night kisses the fading day whispering to his ear, "I am death, your mother. I am to give you fresh birth."

120

I FEEL, thy beauty, dark night, like that of the loved woman when she has put out the lamp.

121

I CARRY in my world that flourishes the worlds that have failed.

122

DEAR friend, I feel the silence of your great thoughts of may a deepening eventide on this beach when I listen to these waves.

123

THE bird thinks it is an act of kindness to give the fish a lift in the air.

124

"IN the moon thou sendest thy love letters to me," said the night to the sun.

"I leave my answers in tears upon the grass."

125

THE Great is a born child; when he dies he gives his great childhood to the world.

126

NOT hammerstrokes, but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.

127

BEES sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave.

The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

128

TO be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

129

ASKS the Possible to the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling place?"

"In the dreams of the impotent," comes the answer.

130

IF you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.

131

I HEAR some rustle of things behind my sadness of heart,--I cannot see them.

132

LEISURE in its activity is work.

The stillness of the sea stirs in waves.

133

THE leaf becomes flower when it loves.

The flower becomes fruit when it worships.

134

THE roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

135

THIS rainy evening the wind is restless.

I look at the swaying branches and ponder over the greatness of all things.

136

STORM of midnight, like a giant child awakened in the untimely dark, has begun to play and shout.

137

THOU raisest thy waves vainly to follow thy lover. O sea, thou lonely bride of the storm.

138

"I AM ashamed of my emptiness," said the Word to the Work.

"I know how poor I am when I see you," said the Work to the Word.

139

TIME is the wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

140

TRUTH in her dress finds facts too tight.

In fiction she moves with ease.

141

WHEN I travelled to here and to there, I was tired of thee, O Road, but now when thou leadest me to everywhere I am wedded to thee in love.

142

LET me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.

143

WOMAN, with the grace of your fingers you touched my things and order came out like music.

144

ONE sad voice has its nest among the ruins of the years.

It sings to me in the night,--"I loved you."

145

THE flaming fire warns me off by its own glow.

Save me from the dying embers hidden under ashes.

146

I HAVE my stars in the sky,

But oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.

147

THE dust of the dead words clings to thee.

Wash thy soul with silence.

148

GAPS are left in life through which comes the sad music of death.

149

THE world has opened its heart of light in the morning.

Come out, my heart, with thy love to meet it.

150

MY thoughts shimmer with these shimmering leaves and my heart sings with the touch of this sunlight; my life is glad to be floating with all things into the blue of space, into the dark of time.

151

GOD'S great power is in the gentle breeze, not in the storm.

152

THIS is a dream in which things are all loose and they oppress. I shall find them gathered in thee when I awake and shall be free.

153

"WHO is there to take up my duties?" asked the setting sun.

"I shall do what I can, my Master," said the earthen lamp.

154

BY plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

155

SILENCE will carry your voice like the nest that holds the sleeping birds.

156

THE Great walks with the Small without fear.

The Middling keeps aloof.

157

THE night opens the flowers in secret and allows the day to get thanks.

158

POWER takes as ingratitude the writhings of its victims.

159

WHEN we rejoice in our fulness, then we can part with our fruits with joy.

160

THE raindrops kissed the earth and whispered,--"We are thy homesick children, mother, come back to thee from the heaven."

161

THE cobweb pretends to catch dew-drops and catches flies.

162

LOVE! when you come with the burning lamp of pain in your hand, I can see your face and know you as bliss.

163

"THE learned say that your lights will one day be no more." said the firefly to the stars.

The stars made no answer.

164

IN the dusk of the evening the bird of some early dawn comes to the nest of my silence.

165

THOUGHTS pass in my mind like flocks of ducks in the sky.

I hear the voice of their wings.

166

THE canal loves to think that rivers exist solely to supply it with water.

167

THE world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.

168

THAT which oppresses me, is it my soul trying to come out in the open, or the soul of the world knocking at my heart for its entrance?

169

THOUGHT feeds itself with its own words and grows.

170

I HAVE dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour; it has filled with love.

171

EITHER you have work or you have not.

When you have to say, "Let us do something," then begins mischief.

172

THE sunflower blushed to own the nameless flower as her kin.

The sun rose and smiled on it, saying, "Are you well, my darling?"

173

"WHO drives me forward like fate?"

"The Myself striding on my back."

174

THE clouds fill the watercups of the river, hiding themselves in the distant hills.

175

I SPILL water from my water jar as I walk on my way,

Very little remains for my home.

176

THE water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.

The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.

177

YOUR smile was the flowers of your own fields, your talk was the rustle of your own mountain pines, but your heart was the woman that we all know.

178

IT is the little things that I leave behind for my loved ones,--great things are for everyone.

179

WOMAN, thou hast encircled the world's heart with the depth of thy tears as the sea has the earth.

180

THE sunshine greets me with a smile. The rain, his sad sister, talks to my heart.

181

MY flower of the day dropped its petals forgotten.

In the evening it ripens into a golden fruit of memory.

182

I AM like the road in the night listening to the footfalls of its memories in silence.

183

THE evening sky to me is like a window, and a lighted lamp, and a waiting behind it.

184

HE who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

185

I AM the autumn cloud, empty of rain, see my fulness in the field of ripened rice.

186

THEY hated and killed and men praised them.

But God in shame hastens to hide its memory under the green grass.

187

TOES are the fingers that have forsaken their past.

188

DARKNESS travels towards light, but blindness towards death.

189

THE pet dog suspects the universe for scheming to take its place.

190

SIT still my heart, do not raise your dust.

Let the world find its way to you.

191

THE bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth--"Your freedom is mine."

192

WOMAN, in your laughter you have the music of the fountain of life.

193

A MIND all logic is like a knife all blade.

It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

194

GOD loves man's lamp lights better than his own great stars.

195

THIS world is the world of wild storms kept tame with the music of beauty.

196

"MY heart is like the golden casket of thy kiss," said the sunset cloud to the sun.

197

BY touching you may kill, by keeping away you may possess.

198

THE cricket's chirp and the patter of rain come to me through the dark, like the rustle of dreams from my past youth.

199

"I HAVE lost my dewdrop," cries the flower to the morning sky that has lost all its stars.

200

THE burning log bursts in flame and cries,--"This is my flower, my death."

201

THE wasp thinks that the honey-hive of the neighbouring bees is too small.

His neighbours ask him to build one still smaller.

202

"I CANNOT keep your waves," says the bank to the river.

"Let me keep your footprints in my heart."

203

THE day, with the noise of this little earth, drowns the silence of all worlds.

204

THE song feels the infinite in the air, the picture in the earth, the poem in the air and the earth;

For its words have meaning that walks and music that soars.

205

WHEN the sun goes down to the West, the East of his morning stands before him in silence.

206

LET me not put myself wrongly to my world and set it against me.

207

PRAISE shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

208

LET my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.

209

MAIDEN, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.

210

THE best does not come alone. It comes with the company of the all.

211

GOD's right hand is gentle, but terrible is his left hand.

212

MY evening came among the alien trees and spoke in a language which my morning stars did not know.

213

NIGHT'S darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

214

OUR desire lends the colours of the rainbow to the mere mists and vapours of life.

215

GOD waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.

216

MY sad thoughts tease me asking me their own names.

217

THE service of the fruit is precious, the service of the flower is sweet, but let my service be the service of the leaves in its shade of humble devotion.

218

MY heart has spread its sails to the idle winds for the shadowy island of Anywhere.

219

MEN are cruel, but Man is kind.

220

MAKE me thy cup and let my fulness be for thee and for thine.

221

THE storm is like the cry of some god in pain whose love the earth refuses.

222

THE world does not leak because death is not a crack.

223

LIFE has become richer by the love that has been lost.

224

MY friend, your great heart shone with the sunrise of the East like the snowy summit of a lonely hill in the dawn.

225

THE fountain of death makes the still water of life play.

226

THOSE who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.

227

THE movement of life has its rest in its own music.

228

KICKS only raise dust and not crops from the earth.

229

OUR names are the light that glows on the sea waves at night and then dies without leaving its signature.

230

LET him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.

231

SET bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in the sky.

232

THE same lotus of our clime blooms here in the alien water with the same sweetness, under another name.

233

IN heart's perspective the distance looms large.

234

THE moon has her light all over the sky, her dark spots to herself.

235

DO not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

236

SMOKE boasts to the sky, and