Rabindranath Tagore

1. Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls

2. Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head, breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning call of the future;

3. Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

4. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

5. The night is black and the forest has no end; a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where or with whom - of that we are unaware.

6. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart…..

7. Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.
Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

8. SUPPOSING I became a champa flower, just for fun, and grew on a branch high up that tree, and shook in the wind with laughter and danced upon the newly budded leaves, would you know me, mother?
You would call, "Baby, where are you?" and I should laugh to myself and keep quite quiet.

9. O you shaggy-headed banyan tree standing on the bank of the pond, have you forgotten the little child, like the birds that have nested in your branches and left you?
Do you not remember how he sat at the window and wondered at the tangle of your roots and plunged underground?

10. In the village they call her the dark girl but to me she is the flower Krishnakali
On a cloudy day in a field
I saw the dark girl's dark gazelle-eyes.
She had no covering on her head, her loose hair had fallen on her back.

11. Pity, in place of love, That pettiest of gifts,
Is but a sugar-coating over neglect. Any passerby can make a gift of it To a street beggar,
Only to forget the moment the first corner is turned. I had not hoped for anything more that day.

12. I want to give you something, my child, for we are drifting in the stream of the world. Our lives will be carried apart, and our love forgotten. But I am not so foolish as to hope that I could buy your heart with my gifts.

13. I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser. The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.

14. Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new