Stray Birds
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Stray Birds
By Rabindranath Tagore
[translated from Bengali to English by the author]
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916
[Frontispiece in color by Willy Pogany]
To
T. HARA
of
Yokohama
1
Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and
fall there with a sigh.
2
O troupe of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints
in my words.
3
The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover.
It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.
4
It is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom.
5
The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who
shakes her head and laughs and flies away.
6
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
7
The sands in your way beg for your song and your movement,
dancing water. Will you carry the burden of their lameness?
8
Her wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.
9
Once we dreamt that we were strangers.
We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.
10
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among
the silent trees.
11
Some unseen fingers, like idle breeze, are playing upon my heart
the music of the ripples.
12
"What language is thine, O sea?"
"The language of eternal question."
"What language is thy answer, O sky?
"The language of eternal silence."
13
Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it
makes love to you.
14
The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night--it is
great. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning.
15
Do not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.
16
I sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by
stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.
17
These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their
whisper of joy in my mind.
18
What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.
19
My wishes are fools, they shout across thy songs, my Master.
Let me but listen.
20
I cannot choose the best.
The best chooses me.
21
They throw their shadows before them who carry their lantern on
their back.
22
That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.
23
"We, the rustling leaves, have a voice that answers the storms,
but who are you so silent?"
"I am a mere flower."
24
Rest belongs to the work as the eyelids to the eyes.
25
Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.
26
God expects answers for the flowers he sends us, not for the sun
and the earth.
27
The light that plays, like a naked child, among the green leaves
happily knows not that man can lie.
28
O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy
mirror.
29
My heart beats her waves at the shore of the world and writes
upon it her signature in tears with the words, "I love thee."
30
"Moon, for what do you wait?"
"To salute the sun for whom I must make way."
31
The trees come up to my window like the yearning voice of the
dumb earth.
32
His own mornings are new surprises to God.
33
Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and its worth
by the claims of love.
34
The dry river-bed finds no thanks for its past.
35
The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a
bird.
36
The waterfall sings, "I find my song, when I find my freedom."
37
I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence.
It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.
38
Woman, when you move about in your household service your limbs
sing like a hill stream among its pebbles.
39
The sun goes to cross the Western sea, leaving its last
salutation to the East.
40
Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.
41
The trees, like the longings of the earth, stand a-tiptoe to peep
at the heaven.
42
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I
had been waiting long.
43
The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is
noisy, the bird in the air is singing,
But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth
and the music of the air.
44
The world rushes on over the strings of the lingering heart
making the music of sadness.
45
He has made his weapons his gods. When his weapons win he is
defeated himself.
46
God finds himself by creating.
47
Shadow, with her veil drawn, follows Light in secret meekness,
with her silent steps of love.
48
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
49
I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power but I am one
with the living creatures that are crushed by it.
50
The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not
move.
51
Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is
greater than your idol.
52
Man does not reveal himself in his history, he struggles up
through it.
53
While the glass lamp rebukes the earthen for calling it cousin,
the moon rises, and the glass lamp, with a bland smile, calls
her, "My dear, dear sister."
54
Like the meeting of the seagulls and the waves we meet and come
near. The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.
55
My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach,
listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.
56
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.
57
We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
58
The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.
59
Never be afraid of the moments--thus sings the voice of the
everlasting.
60
The hurricane seeks the shortest road by the no-road, and
suddenly ends its search in the Nowhere.
61
Take my wine in my own cup, friend.
It loses its wreath of foam when poured into that of others.
62
The Perfect decks itself in beauty for the love of the Imperfect.
63
God says to man, "I heal you therefore I hurt, love you therefore
punish."
64
Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder
standing in the shade with constancy of patience.
65
Tiny grass, your steps are small, but you possess the earth under
your tread.
66
The infant flower opens its bud and cries, "Dear World, please do
not fade."
67
God grows weary of great kingdoms, but never of little flowers.
68
Wrong cannot afford defeat but Right can.
69
"I give my whole water in joy," sings the waterfall, "though
little of it is enough for the thirsty."
70
Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless
outbreak of ecstasy?
71
The woodcutter's axe begged for its handle from the tree.
The tree gave it.
72
In my solitude of heart I feel the sigh of this widowed evening
veiled with mist and rain.
73
Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love.
74
The mist, like love, plays upon the heart of the hills and brings
out surprises of beauty.
75
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
76
The poet wind is out over the sea and the forest to seek his own
voice.
77
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet
discouraged of man.
78
The grass seeks her crowd in the earth.
The tree seeks his solitude of the sky.
79
Man barricades against himself.
80
Your voice, my friend, wanders in my heart, like the muffled
sound of the sea among these listening pines.
81
What is this unseen flame of darkness whose sparks are the stars?
82
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn
leaves.
83
He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds
the gate open.
84
In death the many becomes one; in life the one becomes many.
Religion will be one when God is dead.
85
The artist is the lover of Nature, therefore he is her slave and
her master.
86
"How far are you from me, O Fruit?"
"I am hidden in your heart, O Flower."
87
This longing is for the one who is felt in the dark, but not seen
in the day.
88
"You are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the
smaller one on its upper side," said the dewdrop to the lake.
89
The scabbard is content to be dull when it protects the keenness
of the sword.
90
In darkness the One appears as uniform; in the light the One
appears as manifold.
91
The great earth makes herself hospitable with the help of the
grass.
92
The birth and death of the leaves are the rapid whirls of the
eddy whose wider circles move slowly among stars.
93
Power said to the world, "You are mine.
The world kept it prisoner on her throne.
Love said to the world, "I am thine."
The world gave it the freedom of her house.
94
The mist is like the earth's desire. It hides the sun for whom
she cries.
95
Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers.
96
The noise of the moment scoffs at the music of the Eternal.
97
I think of other ages that floated upon the stream of life and
love and death and are forgotten, and I feel the freedom of
passing away.
98
The sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.
99
Death's stamp gives value to the coin of life; making it possible
to buy with life what is truly precious.
100
The cloud stood humbly in a corner of the sky.
The morning crowned it with splendour.
101
The dust receives insult and in return offers her flowers.
102
Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them, but walk on, for
flowers will keep themselves blooming all your way.
103
Roots are the branches down in the earth.
Branches are roots in the air.
104
The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn
seeking its former nest.
105
Do not insult your friend by lending him merits from your own
pocket.
106
The touch of the nameless days clings to my heart like mosses
round the old tree.
107
The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.
108
God is ashamed when the prosperous boasts of His special favour.
109
I cast my own shadow upon my path, because I have a lamp that has
not been lighted.
110
Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of
silence.
111
That which ends in exhaustion is death, but the perfect ending is
in the endless.
112
The sun has his simple robe of light. The clouds are decked with
gorgeousness.
113
The hills are like shouts of children who raise their arms,
trying to catch stars.
114
The road is lonely in its crowd for it is not loved.
115
The power that boasts of its mischiefs is laughed at by the
yellow leaves that fall, and clouds that pass by.
116
The earth hums to me to-day in the sun, like a woman at her
spinng, some ballad of the ancient 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.