Fruit Gathering: "Men are cruel, but man is kind."

By Rabindranath Tagore

Rabrindinath Tagore  (7th May, 1861 – 7th August, 1941) should need little introduction since this Renaissance Man excelled not only in poetry but novels, short stories, songs, dancedramas, and essays that spoke to generations around the world of universal themes both political and personal. He reshaped Bengali literature and was the first non European to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. Fruit Gathering is a book so rare in style and theme, yet not difficult to relate to as it is based on the relationship between God and man, the atom and the cosmos. Tagore was heavily influenced by the rich heritage of the Subcontinent and uses its fruit and flowers to symbolise the spiritual and moral values that underlie his own devotion and love for the creator. His simple poetic style finds the most evocative words and phrases, symbols and images, which have haunting music in them bringing out the deepest emotions of any reader. Fruit Gathering is the finest example of Tagore’s simple poetic style whose influence is still strong today with his words heard daily in the Indian and Bangladesh national anthems and studied in countless countries as they continue to capture hearts and minds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780009605

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

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Rabindranath Tagore – Fruit Gathering

In this volume we venture to the East. To meet a writer who speaks a common language of love and mysticism which continues to convey valuable insights into universal themes in contemporary society.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man who distinguished himself as a philosopher, social and political reformer and a popular author in all literary genres.  He was instrumental in an increased freedom for the press and influenced Gandhi and the founders of modern India. 

He composed hundreds of songs which are still sung today and include the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. 

His prolific literary life has left a legacy of quality novels, essays, poems and in this volume one of his plays.  He earned the distinction of being the first Asian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Index of Contents

Fruit Gathering

Rabindranath Tagore – A Short Biography

FRUIT GATHERING

I

Bid me and I shall gather my fruits to bring them in full baskets into your courtyard, though some are lost and some not ripe.

For the season grows heavy with its fulness, and there is a plaintive shepherd's pipe in the shade.

Bid me and I shall set sail on the river.

The March wind is fretful, fretting the languid waves into murmurs.

The garden has yielded its all, and in the weary hour of evening the call comes from your house on the shore in the sunset.

II

My life when young was like a flower--a flower that loosens a petal or two from her abundance and never feels the loss when the spring breeze comes to beg at her door.

Now at the end of youth my life is like a fruit, having nothing to spare, and waiting to offer herself completely with her full burden of sweetness.

III

Is summer's festival only for fresh blossoms and not also for withered leaves and faded flowers?

Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves?

Does it not also sing with the waves that fall?

Jewels are woven into the carpet where stands my king, but there are patient clods waiting to be touched by his feet.

Few are the wise and the great who sit by my Master, but he has taken the foolish in his arms and made me his servant for ever.

IV

I woke and found his letter with the morning.

I do not know what it says, for I cannot read.

I shall leave the wise man alone with his books, I shall not trouble him, for who knows if he can read what the letter says.

Let me hold it to my forehead and press it to my heart.

When the night grows still and stars come out one by one I will spread it on my lap and stay silent.

The rustling leaves will read it aloud to me, the rushing stream will chant it, and the seven wise stars will sing it to me from the sky.

I cannot find what I seek, I cannot understand what I would learn; but this unread letter has lightened my burdens and turned my thoughts into songs.

V

A handful of dust could hide your signal when I did not know its meaning.

Now that I am wiser I read it in all that hid it before.

It is painted in petals of flowers; waves flash it from their foam; hills hold it high on their summits.

I had my face turned from you, therefore I read the