Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS, also written Ravīndranātha Thākura, sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 May 1861
CityKolkata, India
CountryIndia
There is no "next" after you are dead and gone from your own world.
The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.
Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.
that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.
The soil in return for her service keeps the tree tied to her, the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
Repentance is a gift of God's grace.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
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.
I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
I ask my destiny - what power is this That cruelly drives me onward without rest? My destiny says, "Look round!" I turn back and see It is I myself that is ever pushing me from behind.
Whenever our life is stirred by truth, it expresses energy and comes to be filled, as it were, with a creative ardor. This consciousness of the creative urge is evidence of the force of truth on our mind.
Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.
Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.