The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore
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in his death he lives in the life of us all, the great Victim.'
And they all stand up and mingle their voices and sing,
'Victory to the Victim.'
VIII
'To the pilgrimage' calls the young,
'to love, to power, to knowledge, to wealth overflowing,'
'We shall conquer the world and the world beyond this,'
they all cry exultant in a thundering cataract of voices,
The meaning is not the same to them all, but only the impulse,
the moving confluence of wills that recks not death and disaster.
No longer they ask for their way,
no more doubts are there to burden their minds or weariness to clog their feet.
The spirit of the Leader is within them and ever beyond them
the Leader who has crossed death and all limits.
They travel over the fields where the seeds are sown,
by the granary where the harvest is gathered,
and across the barren soil where famine dwells
and skeletons cry for the return of their flesh.
They pass through populous cities humming with life,
through dumb desolation bugging its ruined past,
and hovels for the unclad and unclean,
a mockery of home for the homeless.
They travel through long hours of the summer day,
and as the light wanes in the evening they ask the man who reads the sky:
'Brother, is yonder the tower of our final hope and peace?'
The wise man shakes his head and says:
It is the last vanishing cloud of the sunset.'
'Friends,' exhorts the young, 'do not stop.
Through the night's blindness we must struggle into the Kingdom of living light.'
They go on in the dark.
The road seems to know its own meaning
and dust underfoot dumbly speaks of direction.
The starscelestial wayfarerssing in silent chorus:
'Move on, comrades!'
In the air floats the voice of the Leader:
'The goal is nigh.'
IX
The first flush of dawn glistens on the dew-dripping leaves of the forest.
The man who reads the sky cries:
'Friends, we have come!'
They stop and look around.
On both sides of the road the corn is ripe to the horizon,
the glad golden answer of the earth to the morning light.
The current of daily life moves slowly
between the village near the hill and the one by the river bank.
The potter's wheel goes round, the woodcutter brings fuel to the market, the cow-herd takes his cattle to the pasture,
and the woman with the pitcher on her head walks to the well.
But where is the King's castle, the mine of gold, the secret book of magic,
the sage who knows love's utter wisdom?
'The stars cannot be wrong,' assures the reader of the sky.
'Their signal points to that spot.'
And reverently he walks to a wayside spring
from which wells up a stream of water, a liquid light,
like the morning melting into a chorus of tears and laughter.
Near it in a palm grove surrounded by a strange hush stands a leaf-thatched hut,
at whose portal sits the poet of the unknown shore, and sings:
'Mother, open the gate!'
X
A ray of morning sun strikes aslant at the door.
The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval chant of creation:
'Mother, open the gate!'
The gate opens.
The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap,
Like the dawn with the morning star.
The sun's ray that was waiting at the door outside falls on the head of the child.
The poet strikes his lute and sings out:
'Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.'
They kneel down,the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool,and cry:
'Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.'
The old man from the East murmurs to himself:
'I have seen!'
FIREFLIES
FIREFLIES
My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
The voice of wayside pansies,
that do not attract the careless glance,
murmurs in these desultory lines.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind
dreams build their nest with fragments
dropped from day's caravan.
Spring scatters the petals of flowers
that are not for the fruits of the future,
but for the moment's whim.
Joy freed from the bond of earth's slumber
rushes into numberless leaves,
and dances in the air for a day.
My words that are slight
my lightly dance upon time's waves
when my works heavy with import have gone down.
Mind's underground moths
grow filmy wings
and take a farewell flight
in the sunset sky.
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
My thoughts, like sparks, ride on winged surprises,
carrying a single laughter.
The tree gazes in love at its own beautiful shadow