The Poetry Of Heaven

By Rabindranath Tagore

It is often said that two things are unavoidable; Death and Taxes. Certainly the latter is a common thorn in adult life but as to the former it seems that for many people it is merely a hiccup in Life’s eternal journey. A journey they wish, if being of good deed and character, to share at the eternity of Heaven’s largesse, a reward for Faith and the obligations of Religion. Of course for those not so fortunate an altogether different experience was prepared for them; Hell. Its nightmare visions so terrifying conjured up by Dante and Milton. Here we have gathered together verse by such luminaries as William Blake, Gerald Manley Hopkins, John Milton, Ben Jonson, Rupert Brooke and of course many others to share their thoughts and vision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783948741

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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THE POETRY OF HEAVEN

An Introduction.

It is often said that two things are unavoidable; Death and Taxes. Certainly the latter is a common thorn in adult life but as to the former it seems that for many people it is merely a hiccup in Life’s eternal journey. A journey they wish, if being of good deed and character, to share at the eternity of Heaven’s largesse, a reward for Faith and the obligations of Religion. Of course for those not so fortunate an altogether different experience was prepared for them; Hell. Its nightmare visions so terrifying conjured up by Dante and Milton. Here we have gathered together verse by such luminaries as Robert Burns, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, Rupert Brooke and of course many others to share their thoughts and vision.

Index Of Poems

Men Are Heaven's Piers by Robert Louis Stevenson

Lover's Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven by Rabindranath Tagore

Winter Heavens by George Meredith

Heaven by Rupert Brooke

To Mary in Heaven by Robert Burns

Last Night My Soul Cried O Exalted Sphere Of Heaven by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

I Would To Heaven That I Were So Much Clay by Lord Byron

The Hound Of Heaven by Francis Thompson

Except To Heaven, She Is Nought by Emily Dickinson

Heaven Is So Far Of The Mind by Emily Dickinson

I've Known A Heaven, Like A Tent by Emily Dickinson

Which Is best? Heaven by Emily Dickinson

Why - Do They Shut Me Out Of Heaven? by Emily Dickinson

Holy Sonnet VI: This Is My Play's Last Scene, Here Heavens Appoint by John Donne

A Pit - But Heaven Over It by Emily Dickinson

Psalm XIX: The Heavens Declare Thy Glory, Lord by Isaac Watts

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

A Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser

To Heaven by Robert Herrick

In Heaven by Stephen Crane

God Lay Dead In Heaven by Stephen Crane

Heaven - Haven: A Nun Takes The Veil by Gerard Manley Hopkins

My Prayers Must Meet A Brazen Heaven by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Heaven by Ben Jonson

If There Are Any Heavens My Mother Will by E. E. Cummings

Ignorant Before The Heavens Of My Life by Rainer Maria Rilke

Whispers Of Heavenly Death. by Walt Whitman

Heaven by Philip Levine

General William Booth Enters Into Heaven by Vachel Lindsay

How I Walked Alone In The Jungles Of Heaven by Vachel Lindsay

How Far Is It To Heaven? by Emily Dickinson

Immured In Heaven! by Emily Dickinson

Is Heaven A Physician? by Emily Dickinson

Lest This Be Heaven Indeed by Emily Dickinson

So Much Of Heaven Has Gone From Earth by Emily Dickinson

The Fact That Earth Is Heaven by Emily Dickinson

Their Height In Heaven Comforts Not by Emily Dickinson

We Pray - To Heaven by Emily Dickinson

Who Has Not Found The Heaven - Below by Emily Dickinson

When I Shall Sleep by Emily Bronte

Resurrection by Emily Bronte

A Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser

Freedom by Ambrose Bierce

The Death Of Grant by Ambrose Bierce

New Heaven And Earth by DH Lawrence

If Stars Dropped Out Of Heaven by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Far From Love The Heavenly Father by Emily Dickinson

The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell by William Blake

Men Are Heaven's Piers by Robert Louis Stevenson

Men are Heaven's piers; they evermore

Unwearying bear the skyey floor;

Man's theatre they bear with ease,

Unfrowning cariatides!

I, for my wife, the sun uphold,

Or, dozing, strike the seasons cold.

She, on her side, in fairy-wise

Deals in diviner mysteries,

By spells to make the fuel burn

And keep the parlour warm, to turn

Water to wine, and stones to bread,

By her unconquered hero-head.

A naked Adam, naked Eve,

Alone the primal bower we weave;

Sequestered in the seas of life,

A Crusoe couple, man and wife,

With all our good, with all our will,

Our unfrequented isle we fill;

And victor in day's petty wars,

Each for the other lights the stars.

Come then, my Eve, and to and fro

Let us about our garden go;

And, grateful-hearted, hand in hand

Revisit all our tillage land,

And marvel at our strange estate,

For hooded ruin at the gate

Sits watchful, and the angels fear

To see us tread so boldly here.

Meanwhile, my Eve, with flower and grass

Our perishable days we pass;

Far more the thorn observe - and see

How our enormous sins go free -

Nor less admire, beside the rose,

How far a little virtue goes.

Lover's Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven by Rabindranath Tagore

Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is

beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day

and night; it is not of the earth.

But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and

space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust.

Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet body, my child, in your

palpitating heart.

The sea is beating its drums in joy, the flowers are a-tiptoe

to kiss you. For heaven is born in you, in the arms of the