Selected Poems

By Rabindranath Tagore

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In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he remains one of the most important voices of Bengali culture to this day. Tagore’s poetry continues to rise above geographic and cultural boundaries to capture the imaginations of readers around the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: May 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007517015

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SELECTED POEMS

Rabindranath Tagore

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History of Collins

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Life & Times

About the Author

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is regarded as the father of Indian modern literature. He was a polymath and all-round creative talent who became something of a celebrity in the West during the second half of his lifetime. In 1878 Tagore moved to England with the intention of obtaining a degree. However, he was ill-suited to formal education and returned to India in 1880, having failed in his academic ambitions. Despite this, his exposure to English literature, including Shakespeare, had made a lasting impression on Tagore, and he resolved to fuse the European concept of the novel with elements of Indian culture and society.

Tagore came from a very wealthy Indian family, which explains his position to travel and to indulge his creative interests in a country where poverty and hardship were the lot of the common man. Despite his privileged background, he had strong empathy for his fellow human beings, which is largely why he was able to write stories and poems with humility and connection. This empathy came from managing his vast ancestral estates, where he would travel to collect rents and interact with the tenants. This exposed him to traditional storytelling and songs, as well as philosophical and religious ideas. This fertile environment, combined with his intellectual curiosity and imagination, resulted in prolific creativity.

Selected Poems

When Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1913, he was the first non-European to do so. He won in particular for his collection of poems Gitanjali (Song Offerings). These were Tagore’s own translations of 103 poems, originally written in Bengali and published in various books. The theme of the poems was Tagore’s devotion to his god. The Bengal region is now divided between India and Bangladesh and is predominantly Hindu in religion. Hinduism is the oldest major religion and comprises a diversity of concepts. Although there are many gods in Hinduism, the central concept is the Brahman, the supreme spirit. The axis philosophy is that all human spirits are eternal and that they are facsimiles of the Brahman. The ultimate aim in life is therefore to fully realise this and to accordingly attain the appropriate moral behaviour that befits a parallel existence with their god.

Tagore’s poetry is all about his pursuit of assimilation with his god, which is why his words express an intimacy and love that made a connection with others, who belonged to other religions or were disinclined to religion. His poems still applied to secular forms of love, for other human beings, so Tagore’s work appealed to a broad readership. There is something about the evolved human condition to which the topic of love has an innate appeal. Perhaps because it is an emotion that is, by turns, ambiguous, subjective and nebulous. There is undoubtedly an ecological origin and purpose for the emotion we describe as love, but to many people it is interpreted as a quality that sets humanity apart from the rest of life in a spiritual and deterministic way. In other words, they have the anthropocentric concept that humans are somehow divorced from the process of evolution because of our ability to intellectualise our awareness of the world and to feel the emotion of love, precisely because it would seem to have no obvious prosaic function. Tagore, like so many writers before and since, had tapped into a seam that runs through the bedrock of the way all human populations tend to interpret their existence, regardless of their relative exposure to scientific evidence.

Tagore and Kipling

It is difficult to discuss Tagore without comparing him with Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Kipling was also Indian, born of Caucasian stock, whose life ran parallel with that of Tagore. He too wrote many short stories and poems focused on the Indian subcontinent, which inevitably have a very similar feel. It would be fair to say that both writers shared a similar gift for the narrative and both were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: Kipling in 1907 and Tagore in 1913.

While Kipling was among the Anglo-Indian population who administered the British Empire in India, Tagore was a native Indian who resented the colonial presence. He wasn’t overtly political in his activities, but he wasn’t afraid to let his feelings be known, either. He died during World War II and so missed seeing India gain its independence by only a few years.

Kipling is sometimes seen as intrinsically racist and had a particular dislike for Bengalis, of which Tagore was one. As a consequence, there was no love lost between the two literary giants. Tagore had interactions with other white writers, but he ignored Kipling as if he were a pariah. Kipling could not, or would not, acknowledge Tagore’s work as having any literary worth, because his prejudice was so strong. He suggested that Tagore was a pretentious pseudo-intellectual, incapable of writing anything of value. Kipling’s view was typically imperialist due to his upbringing. He had been conditioned to believe that ‘good’ Indians were those who knew their place as servants to the ruling elite, so his racism towards Tagore was amplified by his indignation that a native Indian had risen to the same literary heights as himself. Like all racists, Kipling evidently needed to feel superior to mask his own insecurities, so Tagore’s success presented a psychological impasse to him as it didn’t fit with his model of the way things should be ordered to make him feel self-confident.

In truth, both writers offered an unlikely overlap in literary approach and content, as if they were mirrors reflecting the same influences, but with slightly different perspectives. In many respects Tagore may be seen as the wiser and more intelligent of the two, for he was drawn to writing his own poetry from an early age and was far more open-minded and accommodating of disparate cultural influences. Kipling used writing as a form of escapism, so that it became a place to hide and express his emotions, having suffered a rather unfortunate childhood. The fundamental difference was that Tagore intellectualised the human condition and essentially put himself within the characters so that they were imbued with empathy and sympathy. Kipling lacked the capacity to do this, so that his characters are more stereotyped and lack the complexity observed in real people.

Beyond Writing

Of course, Tagore was also much more than a writer. He was a talented poet, playwright, artist and songwriter. He applied himself on the basis that he was first and foremost a creative soul, so that this core could be tasked with any medium and achieve success. His intellectual curiosity undoubtedly assisted in this end, too, because it provided Tagore with an intimate understanding of the medium and themes upon which to fashion the creative process. Then, there was the simple willingness to try. So many people prevent themselves from being creative because they perpetuate a lack of self-belief borne on their fear of failure. They fail to realise that creative success actually emerges from the process of failure. In other words, we hone our skills by learning from our mistakes, so that every new attempt takes us closer to our objective. Tagore possessed that innate quality that might be described as enjoyment of the process. By not caring about the outcome, he freed his body and mind from fear and subsequently produced consistent results.

Aside from his creative endeavours, Tagore was also a humanitarian and spokesman for the common man. Perhaps his greatest moment came when he renounced his British knighthood in 1919 in indignation at a massacre of Indian men, women and children that occurred in the city of Amritsar. A British officer had feared an insurrection due to the increasing movement against the colonial regime. He ordered his men to fire indiscriminately on a crowd of Indians who had met in the public garden. Several hundred died in the incident, which became known as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Tagore was so ashamed by his official association with the British that he returned his knighthood in protest. By doing so, he rendered himself ordinary again, so that he could stand alongside the victims who had evidently been regarded as so insignificant that their lives had no perceived value to the British. It was about as big a statement against the British mindset as anyone could make, and it only served to elevate Tagore’s reputation as a man of the people. He had won the moral high ground, which would eventually result in India’s independence in 1947.

Of course, he would not have been in a position to make this statement had he not had his creative successes in the first place, so the two went hand-in-hand. The British had awarded Tagore the knighthood as a move to show that they were able to respect the native Indian, well aware of increasing unrest at their colonial presence. This backfired, though, as they had inadvertently given Tagore the means to symbolically demonstrate the national feeling towards the British. It was a classic case of having been hoisted by one’s own petard, as Shakespeare so eloquently put it.

As Tagore’s writings were centred on the cosmology of the Indian race, he became a personification of India – a kind of spiritual envoy. When he died, at the age of 80, his reputation was such that the date of his death is still mourned to this day. It seemed only right that two of his songs should be used as the national anthems for India and Bangladesh, as lasting reminders of his influence.

CONTENTS

Title Page

History of Collins

Life & Times

Gitanjali

The Gardener

The Crescent Moon

The Home

On the Seashore

The Source

Baby’s Way

The Unheeded Pageant

Sleep-Stealer

The Beginning

Baby’s World

When and Why

Defamation

The Judge

Playthings

The Astronomer

Clouds and Waves

The Champa Flower

Fairyland

The Land of The Exile

The Rainy Day

Paper Boats

The Sailor

The Further Bank

The Flower-School

The Merchant

Sympathy

Vocation

Superior

The Little Big Man

Twelve O’clock

Authorship

The Wicked Postman

The Hero

The End

The Recall

The First Jasmines

The Banyan Tree

Benediction

The Gift

My Song

The Child-Angel

The Last Bargain

Stray Birds

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

Copyright

About the Publisher

GITANJALI

Song Offerings

A collection of prose translations made by the author from the original Bengali

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony—and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.

My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

The child who is decked with prince’s robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step.

In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust, he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even