The Essential Works of Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore

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      LOVER’S GIFT

       Table of Contents

      1

      You allowed your kingly power to vanish, Shajahan, but your wish was to make imperishable a tear-drop of love.

      Time has no pity for the human heart, he laughs at its sad struggle to remember.

      You allured him with beauty, made him captive, and crowned the formless death with fadeless form.

      The secret whispered in the hush of night to the ear of your love is wrought in the perpetual silence of stone.

      Though empires crumble to dust, and centuries are lost in shadows, the marble still sighs to the stars, “I remember.”

      “I remember.”—But life forgets, for she has her call to the Endless: and she goes on her voyage unburdened, leaving her memories to the forlorn forms of beauty.

      2

      Come to my garden walk, my love. Pass by the fervid flowers that press themselves on your sight. Pass them by, stopping at some chance joy, that like a sudden wonder of sunset illumines, yet eludes.

      For love’s gift is shy, it never tells its name, it flits across the shade, spreading a shiver of joy along the dust. Overtake it or miss it for ever. But a gift that can be grasped is merely a frail flower, or a lamp with a flame that will flicker.

      3

      The fruits come in crowds into my orchard, they jostle each other. They surge up in the light in an anguish of fullness.

      Proudly step into my orchard, my queen, sit there in the shade, pluck the ripe fruits from their stems, and let them yield, to the utmost, their burden of sweetness at your lips.

      In my orchard the butterflies shake their wings in the sun, the leaves tremble, the fruits clamour to come to completion.

      4

      She is near to my heart as the meadow-flower to the earth; she is sweet to me as sleep is to tired limbs. My love for her is my life flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with serene abandonment.. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur of a stream, that sings with all its waves and currents.

      5

      I would ask for still more, if I had the sky with all its stars, and the world with its endless riches; but I would be content with the smallest corner of this earth if only she were mine.

      6

      In the light of this thriftless day of spring, my poet, sing of those who pass by and do not linger, who laugh as they run and never look back, who blossom in an hour of unreasoning delight, and fade in a moment without regret.

      Do not sit down silently, to tell the beads of your past tears and smiles,—do not stop to pick up the dropped petals from the flowers of overnight, do not go to seek things that evade you, to know the meaning that is not plain,—leave the gaps in your life where they are, for the music to come out of their depths.

      7

      It is little that remains now, the rest was spent in one careless summer. It is just enough to put in a song and sing to you; to weave in a flowerchain gently clasping your wrist; to hang in your ear like a round СКАЧАТЬ