Stray Birds by Rabindranath Tagore (year 7 reading list .txt) 📕

THE raindrop whispered to the jasmine, "Keep me in your heart for ever."

The jasmine sighed, "Alas," and dropped to the ground.

TIMID thoughts, do not be afraid of me.

I am a poet.

THE dim silence of my mind seems filled with crickets' chirp--the grey twilight of sound.

ROCKETS, your insult to the stars follows yourself back to the earth.

THOU hast led me through my crowded travels of the day to my evening's loneliness.

I wait for its meaning through the stillness of the night.

THIS life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship.

In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.

THE stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.

MY heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

THE bird-song is the echo of the morning light back from the earth.

"ARE you too proud to kiss me?" the morning light asks the buttercup.

"HOW may I sing to thee and worship, O Sun?" asked the little flower.

"By the simple silence of thy purity," answered the sun.

MAN is worse than an animal when he is an animal.

DARK clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

LET not the sword-blade mock its handle for being blunt.

THE night's silence, like a deep lamp, is burning with the light of its milky way.

AROUND the sunny island of Life swells day and night death's limitless song of the sea.

IS not this mountain like a flower, with its petals of hills, drinking the sunlight?

THE real with its meaning read wrong and emphasis misplaced is the unreal.

FIND your beauty, my heart, from the world's movement, like the boat that has the grace of the wind and the water.

THE eyes are not proud of their sight but of their eyeglasses.

I LIVE in this little world of mine and am afraid to make it the least less. Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom gladly to lose my all.

THE false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

MY heart, with its lapping waves of song, longs to caress this green world of the sunny day.

WAYSIDE grass, love the star, then your dreams will come out in flowers.

LET your music, like a sword, pierce the noise of the market to its heart.

THE trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers of an infant child.

THIS sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.

It waits to be lifted in the night.

THE little flower lies in the dust.

It sought the path of the butterfly.

I AM in the world of the roads. The night comes. Open thy gate, thou world of the home.

I HAVE sung the songs of thy day. In the evening let me carry thy lamp through the stormy path.

I DO not ask thee into the house.

Come into my infinite loneliness, my Lover.

DEATH belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

I HAVE learnt the simple meaning of thy whispers in flowers and sunshine--teach me to know thy words in pain and death.

THE night's flower was late when the morning kissed her, she shivered and sighed and dropped to the ground.

THROUGH the sadness of all things I hear the crooning of the Eternal Mother.

I CAME to your shore as a stranger, I lived in your house as a guest, I leave your door as a friend, my earth.

LET my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

LIGHT in my heart the evening star of rest and then let the night whisper to me of love.

I AM a child in the dark.

I stretch my hands through the coverlet of night for thee, Mother.

THE day of work is done. Hide my face in your arms, Mother.

Let me dream.

THE lamp of meeting burns long; it goes out in a moment at the parting.

ONE word keep for me in thy silence, O World, when I am dead, "I have loved."

WE live in this world when we love it.

LET the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

I HAVE seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.

I SHALL die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.

WHILE I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.

LOVE is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

THEY light their own lamps and sing their own words in their temples.

But the birds sing thy name in thine own morning light,--for thy name is joy.

LEAD me in the centre of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.

LET them live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks.

My heart longs for thy stars, my God.

LOVE'S pain sang round my life like the unplumbed sea, and love's joy sang like birds in its flowering groves.

PUT out the lamp when thou wishest.

I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.

WHEN I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

SOME day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, "I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man."

CLOUDS come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

TRUTH raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds broadcast.

THE storm of the last night has crowned this morning with golden peace.

TRUTH seems to come with its final word; and the final word gives birth to its next.

BLESSED is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.

SWEETNESS of thy name fills my heart when I forget mine--like thy morning sun when the mist is melted.

THE silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous day of the child.

THE world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.

GOD waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.

LET me feel this world as thy love taking form, then my love will help it.

THY sunshine smiles upon the winter days of my heart, never doubting of its spring flowers.

GOD kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.

THOU crossest desert lands of barren years to reach the moment of fulfilment.

GOD's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.

THOU wilt find, Eternal Traveller, marks of thy footsteps across my songs.

LET me not shame thee, Father, who displayest thy glory in thy children.

CHEERLESS is the day, the light under frowning clouds is like a punished child with traces of tears on its pale cheeks, and the cry of the wind is like the cry of a wounded world. But I know I am travelling to meet my Friend.

TO-NIGHT there is a stir among the palm leaves, a swell in the sea, Full Moon, like the heart throb of the world. From what unknown sky hast thou carried in thy silence the aching secret of love?

I DREAM of a star, an island of light, where I shall be born and in the depth of its quickening leisure my life will ripen its works like the ricefield in the autumn sun.

THE smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.

THAT love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.

WE shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which our soul has gained, for her gains are one with herself.

GOD comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from my past kept fresh in his basket.

WHEN all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at every touch of thine will come out the music of love.

LET me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.

MAN'S history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the insulted man.

I FEEL thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.

I LONG for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.

THE prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset, in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.

I HAVE scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden wisdom.

THINGS look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk--the spires whose bases are lost in the dark and tree tops like blots of ink. I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the light.

I HAVE suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that I am in this great world.

THERE are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.

RELEASE me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind making death difficult.

LET this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.