No More Learning

Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom
gladly to lose my all.

258
The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

259
My heart, with its lapping waves of song, longs to caress this
green world of the sunny day.

260
Wayside grass, love the star, then your dreams will come out in
flowers.

261
Let your music, like a sword, pierce the noise of the market to
its heart.

262
The trembling leaves of this tree touch my heart like the fingers
of an infant child.

263
This sadness of my soul is her bride's veil.
It waits to be lifted in the night.

264
The little flower lies in the dust.
It sought the path of the butterfly.

265
I am in the world of the roads. The night comes. Open thy gate,
thou world of the home.

266
I have sung the songs of thy day. In the evening let me carry
thy lamp through the stormy path.

267
I do not ask thee into the house.
Come into my infinite loneliness, my Lover.

268
Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising
of the foot as in the laying of it down.

269
I have learnt the simple meaning of thy whispers in flowers and
sunshine--teach me to know thy words in pain and death.

270
The night's flower was late when the morning kissed her, she
shivered and sighed and dropped to the ground.

271
Through the sadness of all things I hear the crooning of the
Eternal Mother.

272
I came to your shore as a stranger, I lived in your house as a
guest, I leave your door as a friend, my earth.

273
Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow
of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

274
Light in my heart the evening star of rest and then let the night
whisper to me of love.

275
I am a child in the dark.
I stretch my hands through the coverlet of night for thee,
Mother.

276
The day of work is done. Hide my face in your arms, Mother.
Let me dream.

277
The lamp of meeting burns long; it goes out in a moment at the
parting.

278
One word keep for me in thy silence, O World, when I am dead, "I
have loved. "

279
We live in this world when we love it.

280
Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the
immortality of love.

281
I have seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in
the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.

282
I shall die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.

283
While I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile
from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.

284
Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

285
They light their own lamps and sing their own words in their
temples.
But the birds sing thy name in thine own morning light,--for thy
name is joy.

286
Lead me in the centre of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.

287
Let them live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks.
My heart longs for thy stars, my God.

288
Love's pain sang round my life like the unplumbed sea, and love's
joy sang like birds in its flowering groves.

289
Put out the lamp when thou wishest.
I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.

290
When I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars
and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

291
Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world,
"I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love
of man. "

292
Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to
shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

293
Truth raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds
broadcast.

294
The storm of the last night has crowned this morning with golden
peace.

295
Truth seems to come with its final word; and the final word gives
birth to its next.

296
Blessed is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.

297
Sweetness of thy name fills my heart when I forget mine--like thy
morning sun when the mist is melted.

298
The silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous
day of the child.

299
The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of
him when he laughed.

300
God waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.

301
Let me feel this world as thy love taking form, then my love will
help it.

302
Thy sunshine smiles upon the winter days of my heart, never
doubting of its spring flowers.

303
God kisses the finite in his love and man the infinite.

304
Thou crossest desert lands of barren years to reach the moment of
fulfilment.

305
God's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.

306
Thou wilt find, Eternal Traveller, marks of thy footsteps across
my songs.

307
Let me not shame thee, Father, who displayest thy glory in thy
children.

308
Cheerless is the day, the light under frowning clouds is like a
punished child with traces of tears on its pale cheeks, and the
cry of the wind is like the cry of a wounded world. But I know I
am travelling to meet my Friend.

309
To-night there is a stir among the palm leaves, a swell in the
sea, Full Moon, like the heart throb of the world. From what
unknown sky hast thou carried in thy silence the aching secret of
love?

310
I dream of a star, an island of light, where I shall be born and
in the depth of its quickening leisure my life will ripen its
works like the ricefield in the autumn sun.

311
The smell of the wet earth in the rain rises like a great chant
of praise from the voiceless multitude of the insignificant.

312
That love can ever lose is a fact that we cannot accept as truth.

313
We shall know some day that death can never rob us of that which
our soul has gained, for her gains are one with herself.

314
God comes to me in the dusk of my evening with the flowers from
my past kept fresh in his basket.

315
When all the strings of my life will be tuned, my Master, then at
every touch of thine will come out the music of love.

316
Let me live truly, my Lord, so that death to me become true.

317
Man's history is waiting in patience for the triumph of the
insulted man.

318
I feel thy gaze upon my heart this moment like the sunny silence
of the morning upon the lonely field whose harvest is over.

319
I long for the Island of Songs across this heaving Sea of Shouts.

320
The prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset,
in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.

321
I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and
barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into
the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden
wisdom.

322
Things look phantastic in this dimness of the dusk--the spires
whose bases are lost in the dark and tree tops like blots of ink.
I shall wait for the morning and wake up to see thy city in the
light.

323
I have suffered and despaired and known death and I am glad that
I am in this great world.

324
There are tracts in my life that are bare and silent. They are
the open spaces where my busy days had their light and air.

325
Release me from my unfulfilled past clinging to me from behind
making death difficult.

326
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.










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Title: The Fugitive

Author: Rabindranath Tagore

Posting Date: November 4, 2012 [EBook #7971]
Release Date: April, 2005
First Posted: June 8, 2003

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUGITIVE ***




Produced by Eric Eldred, Christine De Ryck, Charles Franks,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










THE FUGITIVE

BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE







TO

W. W. PEARSON



CONTENTS


THE FUGITIVE--I.

KACHA AND DEVAYANI

TRANSLATIONS

THE FUGITIVE--II.

AMA AND VINAYAKA

THE MOTHER'S PRAYER

TRANSLATIONS

THE FUGITIVE--III.

SOMAKA AND RITVIK

KARNA AND KUNTI

TRANSLATIONS



1


Darkly you sweep on, Eternal Fugitive, round whose bodiless rush stagnant
space frets into eddying bubbles of light.

Is your heart lost to the Lover calling you across his immeasurable
loneliness?

Is the aching urgency of your haste the sole reason why your tangled
tresses break into stormy riot and pearls of fire roll along your path as
from a broken necklace?


Your fleeting steps kiss the dust of this world into sweetness, sweeping
aside all waste; the storm centred with your dancing limbs shakes the
sacred shower of death over life and freshens her growth.

Should you in sudden weariness stop for a moment, the world would rumble
into a heap, an encumbrance, barring its own progress, and even the least
speck of dust would pierce the sky throughout its infinity with an
unbearable pressure.


My thoughts are quickened by this rhythm of unseen feet round which the
anklets of light are shaken.

They echo in the pulse of my heart, and through my blood surges the psalm
of the ancient sea.

I hear the thundering flood tumbling my life from world to world and form
to form, scattering my being in an endless spray of gifts, in sorrowings
and songs.


The tide runs high, the wind blows, the boat dances like thine own desire,
my heart!

Leave the hoard on the shore and sail over the unfathomed dark towards
limitless light.



2


We came hither together, friend, and now at the cross-roads I stop to bid
you farewell.

Your path is wide and straight before you, but my call comes up by ways
from the unknown.

I shall follow wind and cloud; I shall follow the stars to where day breaks
behind the hills; I shall follow lovers who, as they walk, twine their days
into a wreath on a single thread of song, "I love. "



3


It was growing dark when I asked her, "What strange land have I come to? "

She only lowered her eyes, and the water gurgled in the throat of her jar,
as she walked away.

The trees hang vaguely over the bank, and the land appears as though it
already belonged to the past.

The water is dumb, the bamboos are darkly still, a wristlet tinkles against
the water-jar from down the lane.


Row no more, but fasten the boat to this tree,--for I love the look of this
land.

The evening star goes down behind the temple dome, and the pallor of the
marble landing haunts the dark water.

Belated wayfarers sigh; for light from hidden windows is splintered into
the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet
tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down the
lane littered with leaves.

The night deepens, the palace towers loom spectre-like, and the town hums
wearily.

Row no more, but fasten the boat to a tree.

Let me seek rest in this strange land, dimly lying under the stars, where
darkness tingles with the tinkle of a wristlet knocking against a
water-jar.



4


O that I were stored with a secret, like unshed rain in summer clouds--a
secret, folded up in silence, that I could wander away with.

O that I had some one to whisper to, where slow waters lap under trees that
doze in the sun.

The hush this evening seems to expect a footfall, and you ask me for the
cause of my tears.

I cannot give a reason why I weep, for that is a secret still withheld from
me.



5


For once be careless, timid traveller, and utterly lose your way;
wide-awake though you are, be like broad daylight enticed by and netted in
mist.

Do not shun the garden of Lost Hearts waiting at the end of the wrong road,
where the grass is strewn with wrecked red flowers, and disconsolate water
heaves in the troubled sea.

Long have you watched over the store gathered by weary years. Let it be
stripped, with nothing remaining but the desolate triumph of losing all.



6


Two little bare feet flit over the ground, and seem to embody that
metaphor, "Flowers are the footprints of summer. "

They lightly impress on the dust the chronicle of their adventure, to be
erased by a passing breeze.

Come, stray into my heart, you tender little feet, and leave the
everlasting print of songs on my dreamland path.



7


I am like the night to you, little flower.

I can only give you peace and a wakeful silence hidden in the dark.

When in the morning you open your eyes, I shall leave you to a world a-hum
with bees, and songful with birds.

My last gift to you will be a tear dropped into the depth of your youth; it
will make your smile all the sweeter, and bemist your outlook on the
pitiless mirth of day.



8


Do not stand before my window with those hungry eyes and beg for my secret.
It is but a tiny stone of glistening pain streaked with blood-red by
passion.

What gifts have you brought in both hands to fling before me in the dust?

I fear, if I accept, to create a debt that can never be paid even by the
loss of all I have.

Do not stand before my window with your youth and flowers to shame my
destitute life.



9


If I were living in the royal town of Ujjain, when Kalidas was the king's
poet, I should know some Malwa girl and fill my thoughts with the music of
her name. She would glance at me through the slanting shadow of her
eyelids, and allow her veil to catch in the jasmine as an excuse for
lingering near me.

This very thing happened in some past whose track is lost under time's dead
leaves.

The scholars fight to-day about dates that play hide-and-seek.

I do not break my heart dreaming over flown and vanished ages: but alas and
alas again, that those Malwa girls have followed them!

To what heaven, I wonder, have they carried in their flower-baskets those
days that tingled to the lyrics of the king's poet?

This morning, separation from those whom I was born too late to meet weighs
on and saddens my heart.

Yet April carries the same flowers with which they decked their hair, and
the same south breeze fluttered their veils as whispers over modern roses.

And, to tell the truth, joys are not lacking to this spring, though Kalidas
sing no more; and I know, if he can watch me from the Poets' Paradise, he
has reasons to be envious.



10


Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: leave it in the dark.

What if her beauty be of the figure and her smile merely of the face? Let
me take without question the simple meaning of her glances and be happy.

I care not if it be a web of delusion that her arms wind about me, for the
web itself is rich and rare, and the deceit can be smiled at and forgotten.

Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is
true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances
like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath.



11


Neither mother nor daughter are you, nor bride, Urvashi. [1] Woman you are,
to ravish the soul of Paradise.

[Footnote 1: The dancing girl of Paradise who rose from the sea. ]

When weary-footed evening comes down to the folds whither the cattle have
returned, you never trim the house lamps nor walk to the bridal bed with a
tremulous heart and a wavering smile on your lips, glad that the dark hours
are so secret.

Like the dawn you are without veil, Urvashi, and without shame.

Who can imagine that aching overflow of splendour which created you!


You rose from the churned ocean on the first day of the first spring, with
the cup of life in your right hand and poison in your left. The monster
sea, lulled like an enchanted snake, laid down its thousand hoods at your
feet.

Your unblemished radiance rose from the foam, white and naked as a jasmine.


Were you ever small, timid or in bud, Urvashi, O Youth everlasting?

Did you sleep, cradled in the deep blue night where the strange light of
gems plays over coral, shells and moving creatures of dreamlike form, till
day revealed your awful fulness of bloom?


Adored are you of all men in all ages, Urvashi, O endless wonder!

The world throbs with youthful pain at the glance of your eyes, the ascetic
lays the fruit of his austerities at your feet, the songs of poets hum and
swarm round the perfume of your presence. Your feet, as in careless joy
they flit on, wound even the heart of the hollow wind with the tinkle of
golden bells.

When you dance before the gods, flinging orbits of novel rhythm into space,
Urvashi, the earth shivers, leaf and grass, and autumn fields heave and
sway; the sea surges into a frenzy of rhyming waves; the stars drop into
the sky--beads from the chain that leaps till it breaks on your breast; and
the blood dances in men's hearts with sudden turmoil.


You are the first break on the crest of heaven's slumber, Urvashi, you
thrill the air with unrest. The world bathes your limbs in her tears; with
colour of her heart's blood are your feet red; lightly you poise on the
wave-tossed lotus of desire, Urvashi; you play forever in that limitless
mind wherein labours God's tumultuous dream.



12


You, like a rivulet swift and sinuous, laugh and dance, and your steps sing
as you trip along.

I, like a bank rugged and steep, stand speechless and stock-still and
darkly gaze at you.


I, like a big, foolish storm, of a sudden come rushing on and try to rend
my being and scatter it parcelled in a whirl of passion.

You, like the lightning's flash slender and keen, pierce the heart of the
turbulent darkness, to disappear in a vivid streak of laughter.



13


You desired my love and yet you did not love me.

Therefore my life clings to you like a chain of which clank and grip grow
harsher the more you struggle to be free.

My despair has become your deadly companion, clutching at the faintest of
your favours, trying to drag you away into the cavern of tears.

You have shattered my freedom, and with its wreck built your own prison.



14


I am glad you will not wait for me with that lingering pity in your look.

It is only the spell of the night and my farewell words, startled at their
own tune of despair, which bring these tears to my eyes. But day will dawn,
my eyes will dry and my heart; and there will be no time for weeping.


Who says it is hard to forget?