Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
It started off on a wrong foot for me, because of the introduction by Yeats that gave me a feeling this was going to be the ones from -everybody liked it but you did not - kind of book. And in the few pages in the starting, it felt okay to me. However, as the song? poem? the way Tagore described each feeling, giving us a visual treat in all of it; I would club him in my list of 'poets of longing' (as I heard in one of the videos) with Rumi and Rilke. Although it is difficult for me to wrap my head around the religious side of it, I loved the writing and the feeling it gave.
Here are my favourite lines (I think, these are some of the most beautiful lines I have read Till Now)
"Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers."
"do not pass by like a dream."
"The horizon is fiercely naked—not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower. "
"I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation—in the shadow of a dim delight. "
"The sleep that flits on baby's eyes—does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling there, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glow-worms, there hang two timid buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby's eyes.
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps—does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning—the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.
When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth—when I sing to make you dance.When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice—when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands."
"When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang 'Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'
But one cried of a sudden—'It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light and one of the stars has been lost.'
The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped, and they cried in dismay—'Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory of all heavens!'
From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry goes on from one to the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!
Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile and whisper among themselves—'Vain is this seeking! unbroken perfection is over all!'"
"It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.
It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all nights from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.
It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joy in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet's heart."
"And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well."
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