No More Learning

Whenever a cow
or a buffalo has selected a spot to its liking and is comfortably grazing
there, I cannot divine what purpose is served by worrying it, as he
insists on doing, till it shifts somewhere else. I suppose it is man's
masterfulness glorying in triumph over the powerful creature it has tamed.
Anyhow, I love to see these buffaloes amongst the lush grass.

But this is not what I started to say. I wanted to tell you how the least
thing distracts me nowadays from my duty to the _Sadhana_. In my last
letter[1] I told you of the bumble-bees which hover round me in some
fruitless quest, to the tune of a meaningless humming, with tireless
assiduity.

[Footnote 1: Not included in this selection. ]

They come every day at about nine or ten in the morning, dart up to my
table, shoot down under the desk, go bang on to the coloured glass
window-pane, and then with a circuit or two round my head are off again
with a whizz.

I could easily have thought them to be departed spirits who had left this
world unsatisfied, and so keep coming back to it again and again in the
guise of bees, paying me an inquiring visit in passing. But I think
nothing of the kind. I am sure they are real bees, otherwise known, in
Sanskrit, as honey-suckers, or on still rarer occasions as
double-proboscideans.




SHELIDAH,

_16th (Phalgun) February_ 1895.


We have to tread every single moment of the way as we go on living our
life, but when taken as a whole it is such a very small thing, two hours
uninterrupted thought can hold all of it.

After thirty years of strenuous living Shelley could only supply material
for two volumes of biography, of which, moreover, a considerable space is
taken up by Dowden's chatter. The thirty years of my life would not fill
even one volume.

What a to-do there is over this tiny bit of life! To think of the quantity
of land and trade and commerce which go to furnish its commissariat alone,
the amount of space occupied by each individual throughout the world,
though one little chair is large enough to hold the whole of him! Yet,
after all is over and done, there remains only material for two hours'
thought, some pages of writing!

What a negligible fraction of my few pages would this one lazy day of mine
occupy! But then, will not this peaceful day, on the desolate sands by the
placid river, leave nevertheless a distinct little gold mark even upon the
scroll of my eternal past and eternal future?




SHELIDAH,

_28th February_ 1895.


I have got an anonymous letter to-day which begins:

To give up one's self at the feet of another,
is the truest of all gifts.

The writer has never seen me, but knows me from my writings, and goes on
to say:

However petty or distant, the Sun[1]-worshipper gets a share of the
Sun's rays. You are the world's poet, yet to me it seems you are my own
poet!

[Footnote 1: Rabi, the author's name, means the Sun. ]

and more in the same strain.

Man is so anxious to bestow his love on some object, that he ends by
falling in love with his own Ideal. But why should we suppose the idea to
be less true than the reality? We can never know for certain the truth of
the substance underlying what we get through the senses. Why should the
doubt be greater in the case of the entity behind the ideas which are the
creation of mind?

The mother realises in her child the great Idea, which is in every child,
the ineffableness of which, however, is not revealed to any one else. Are
we to say that what draws forth the mother's very life and soul is
illusory, but what fails to draw the rest of us to the same extent is the
real truth?

Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love--the beauty of his
soul knows no limit. . . . But I am departing into generalities. What I
wanted to express is, that in one sense I have no right to accept this
offering of my admirer's heart; that is to say, for me, seen within my
everyday covering, such a person could not possibly have had these
feelings. But there is another sense in which I am worthy of all this, or
of even greater adoration.




ON THE WAY TO PABNA,

_9th July_ 1895.


I am gliding through this winding little Ichamati, this streamlet of the
rainy season. With rows of villages along its banks, its fields of jute
and sugar-cane, its reed patches, its green bathing slopes, it is like a
few lines of a poem, often repeated and as often enjoyed. One cannot
commit to memory a big river like the Padma, but this meandering little
Ichamati, the flow of whose syllables is regulated by the rhythm of the
rains, I am gradually making my very own. . . .

It is dusk, the sky getting dark with clouds. The thunder rumbles
fitfully, and the wild casuarina clumps bend in waves to the stormy gusts
which pass through them. The depths of bamboo thickets look black as ink.
The pallid twilight glimmers over the water like the herald of some weird
event.

I am bending over my desk in the dimness, writing this letter. I want to
whisper low-toned, intimate talk, in keeping with this penumbra of the
dusk. But it is just wishes like these which baffle all effort. They
either get fulfilled of themselves, or not at all. That is why it is a
simple matter to warm up to a grim battle, but not to an easy,
inconsequent talk.




SHELIDAH,

_14th August_ 1895.


One great point about work is that for its sake the individual has to make
light of his personal joys and sorrows; indeed, so far as may be, to
ignore them. I am reminded of an incident at Shazadpur. My servant was
late one morning, and I was greatly annoyed at his delay. He came up and
stood before me with his usual _salaam_, and with a slight catch in
his voice explained that his eight-year-old daughter had died last night.
Then, with his duster, he set to tidying up my room.

When we look at the field of work, we see some at their trades, some
tilling the soil, some carrying burdens, and yet underneath, death,
sorrow, and loss are flowing, in an unseen undercurrent, every day,--their
privacy not intruded upon. If ever these should break forth beyond control
and come to the surface, then all this work would at once come to a stop.
Over the individual sorrows, flowing beneath, is a hard stone track,
across which the trains of duty, with their human load, thunder their way,
stopping for none save at appointed stations. This very cruelty of work
proves, perhaps, man's sternest consolation.




KUSHTEA,

_5th October 1895_.


The religion that only comes to us from external scriptures never becomes
our own; our only tie with it is that of habit. To gain religion within is
man's great lifelong adventure. In the extremity of suffering must it be
born; on his life-blood it must live; and then, whether or not it brings
him happiness, the man's journey shall end in the joy of fulfilment.

We rarely realise how false for us is that which we hear from other lips,
or keep repeating with our own, while all the time the temple of our Truth
is building within us, brick by brick, day after day. We fail to
understand the mystery of this eternal building when we view our joys and
sorrows apart by themselves, in the midst of fleeting time; just as a
sentence becomes unintelligible if one has to spell through every word of
it.

When once we perceive the unity of the scheme of that creation which is
going on in us, we realise our relation to the ever-unfolding universe. We
realise that we are in the process of being created in the same way as are
the glowing heavenly orbs which revolve in their courses,--our desires,
our sufferings, all finding their proper place within the whole.

We may not know exactly what is happening: we do not know exactly even
about a speck of dust. But when we feel the flow of life in us to be one
with the universal life outside, then all our pleasures and pains are seen
strung upon one long thread of joy. The facts: _I am, I move, I
grow_, are seen in all their immensity in connection with the fact that
everything else is there along with me, and not the tiniest atom can do
without me.

The relation of my soul to this beautiful autumn morning, this vast
radiance, is one of intimate kinship; and all this colour, scent, and
music is but the outward expression of our secret communion. This constant
communion, whether realised or unrealised, keeps my mind in movement; out
of this intercourse between my inner and outer worlds I gain such
religion, be it much or little, as my capacity allows: and in its light I
have to test scriptures before I can make them really my own.




SHELIDAH,

_12th December 1895. _


The other evening I was reading an English book of criticisms, full of all
manner of disputations about Poetry, Art, Beauty, and so forth and so on.
As I plodded through these artificial discussions, my tired faculties
seemed to have wandered into a region of empty mirage, filled with the
presence of a mocking demon.

The night was far advanced. I closed the book with a bang and flung it on
the table. Then I blew out the lamp with the idea of turning into bed. No
sooner had I done so than, through the open windows, the moonlight burst
into the room, with a shock of surprise.

That little bit of a lamp had been sneering drily at me, like some
Mephistopheles: and that tiniest sneer had screened off this infinite
light of joy issuing forth from the deep love which is in all the world.
What, forsooth, had I been looking for in the empty wordiness of the book?
There was the very thing itself, filling the skies, silently waiting for
me outside, all these hours!

If I had gone off to bed leaving the shutters closed, and thus missed this
vision, it would have stayed there all the same without any protest
against the mocking lamp inside. Even if I had remained blind to it all my
life,--letting the lamp triumph to the end,--till for the last time I went
darkling to bed,--even then the moon would have still been there, sweetly
smiling, unperturbed and unobtrusive, waiting for me as she has throughout
the ages.







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This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: Stray Birds

Author: Rabindranath Tagore

Posting Date: March 27, 2010 [EBook #6524]
Release Date: September, 2004
First Posted: December 25, 2002

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRAY BIRDS ***




Produced by Chetan K. Jain and Eric Eldred









Stray Birds


By Rabindranath Tagore


[translated from Bengali to English by the author]


New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916


[Frontispiece in color by Willy Pogany]



To
T. HARA
of
Yokohama




1
Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and
fall there with a sigh.

2
O troupe of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints
in my words.

3
The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover.
It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.

4
It is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom.

5
The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who
shakes her head and laughs and flies away.

6
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

7
The sands in your way beg for your song and your movement,
dancing water. Will you carry the burden of their lameness?

8
Her wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.

9
Once we dreamt that we were strangers.
We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

10
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among
the silent trees.

11
Some unseen fingers, like idle breeze, are playing upon my heart
the music of the ripples.

12
"What language is thine, O sea? "

"The language of eternal question. "

"What language is thy answer, O sky?

"The language of eternal silence. "

13
Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it
makes love to you.

14
The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night--it is
great. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning.

15
Do not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.

16
I sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by
stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.

17
These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their
whisper of joy in my mind.

18
What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

19
My wishes are fools, they shout across thy songs, my Master.
Let me but listen.

20
I cannot choose the best.
The best chooses me.

21
They throw their shadows before them who carry their lantern on
their back.

22
That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.

23
"We, the rustling leaves, have a voice that answers the storms,
but who are you so silent? "

"I am a mere flower. "

24
Rest belongs to the work as the eyelids to the eyes.

25
Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.

26
God expects answers for the flowers he sends us, not for the sun
and the earth.

27
The light that plays, like a naked child, among the green leaves
happily knows not that man can lie.

28
O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy
mirror.

29
My heart beats her waves at the shore of the world and writes
upon it her signature in tears with the words, "I love thee. "

30
"Moon, for what do you wait? "

"To salute the sun for whom I must make way. "

31
The trees come up to my window like the yearning voice of the
dumb earth.

32
His own mornings are new surprises to God.

33
Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and its worth
by the claims of love.

34
The dry river-bed finds no thanks for its past.

35
The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a
bird.

36
The waterfall sings, "I find my song, when I find my freedom. "

37
I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence.
It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

38
Woman, when you move about in your household service your limbs
sing like a hill stream among its pebbles.

39
The sun goes to cross the Western sea, leaving its last
salutation to the East.

40
Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.

41
The trees, like the longings of the earth, stand a-tiptoe to peep
at the heaven.

42
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I
had been waiting long.

43
The fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is
noisy, the bird in the air is singing,
But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth
and the music of the air.

44
The world rushes on over the strings of the lingering heart
making the music of sadness.

45
He has made his weapons his gods. When his weapons win he is
defeated himself.

46
God finds himself by creating.

47
Shadow, with her veil drawn, follows Light in secret meekness,
with her silent steps of love.

48
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

49
I thank thee that I am none of the wheels of power but I am one
with the living creatures that are crushed by it.

50
The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not
move.

51
Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is
greater than your idol.

52
Man does not reveal himself in his history, he struggles up
through it.

53
While the glass lamp rebukes the earthen for calling it cousin,
the moon rises, and the glass lamp, with a bland smile, calls
her, "My dear, dear sister. "

54
Like the meeting of the seagulls and the waves we meet and come
near. The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.

55
My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach,
listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.

56
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

57
We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

58
The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

59
Never be afraid of the moments--thus sings the voice of the
everlasting.

60
The hurricane seeks the shortest road by the no-road, and
suddenly ends its search in the Nowhere.

61
Take my wine in my own cup, friend.
It loses its wreath of foam when poured into that of others.

62
The Perfect decks itself in beauty for the love of the Imperfect.

63
God says to man, "I heal you therefore I hurt, love you therefore
punish. "

64
Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder
standing in the shade with constancy of patience.

65
Tiny grass, your steps are small, but you possess the earth under
your tread.

66
The infant flower opens its bud and cries, "Dear World, please do
not fade. "

67
God grows weary of great kingdoms, but never of little flowers.

68
Wrong cannot afford defeat but Right can.

69
"I give my whole water in joy," sings the waterfall, "though
little of it is enough for the thirsty. "

70
Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless
outbreak of ecstasy?