Gitanjali (song Offerings)Macmillan and Company, Limited, 1913 - 101 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
art thou baby's beauty beggar Bengali bird songs birds boat break breath cast nets chariot clouds comes cottage door cursed sleep dark death will knock decked delight depth dream dust earth EVELYN UNDERHILL eyes fear lest flowers forest groves Gitanjali give glad glad songs gloom golden heart journey king lamp last kind words least little grain leave in silence light little be left lord lost lotus melodies mind morning night pass path Pearl fishers play pleasure RABINDRANATH TAGORE SĀDHANĀ shadow shame shut sight silent sing sleep smile songs sorrow spread stand before thee stars stood stream sudden sweet thee face thine thou art thou didst thou hast thought thunder thy door thy face thy feet thy love thy music thy seat thyself touch turbed utter vanish voice W. B. YEATS wakeful want thee WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN wind words
Popular passages
Page 24 - DELIVERANCE is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight. Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.
Page xxvii - HAVE you not heard his silent steps ? He comes, comes, ever comes. Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes. Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind, but all their notes have always proclaimed,
Page xxvii - 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; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into everwidening thought and action — Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country...
Page 27 - I WAS not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight ! When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death...
Page xxv - HE whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around ; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.
Page 10 - LIGHT, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light! Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life ; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love ; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
Page xiii - 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. At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Page 7 - IN the deep shadows of the rainy July, with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers. To-day the morning has closed its eyes, heedless of the insistent calls of the loud east wind, and a thick veil has been drawn over the ever-wakeful blue sky. The woodlands have hushed their songs, and doors are all shut at every house. Thou art the solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house — do not pass by like a dream.
Page vi - A whole people, a whole civilization, immeasurably strange to us, seems to have been taken up into this imagination ; and yet we are not moved because of its strangeness, but because we have met our own image, as though we had walked in Rossetti's willow wood, or heard, perhaps for the first time in literature, our voice as in a dream.
Page 27 - ... are placed. These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind, and trying to light them I forget all else again and again. But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark, spreading my mat on the floor; and whenever it is thy pleasure, my lord, come silently and take thy seat here. 100 I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.