**1
Fireflies
The lines in the following pages had their origin in China and Japan where thoughts were very often claimed from me in my handwriting on fans and pieces of silk.
Rabindranath Tagore
S. S. Fulda
Dec. 12. 1926
**2
1
My fancies are fireflies.
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
2
The same voice murmurs
in these desultory lines
which is born in wayside pansies
letting hasty glances pass by.
3
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind
dreams build their nest
with bits of things
dropped from day’s caravan.
4
Spring scatters
the petals of flowers
that are not for the fruits of the future
but for the moment’s whim.
5
Joy freed from the bond of earth’s slumber
rushes into the leaves numberless
and dances in the air for a day.
6
My words that are slight
may lightly dance upon time’s waves
while my works heavy with import sink.
7
Mind’s underground moths
grow filmy wings
and take a farewell flight
in the sunset sky
till their hum is hushed.
**3
8
The butterfly counts not months but moments
and has time enough.
9
My thoughts, like sparks, ride on the winged surprises,
carr{y}ing a single laughter.
10
The tree gazes in love at the beautiful shadow
who is his own and yet whom he never can grasp.
11
Let my love, like sunlight, surround you
and give you a freedom illumined.
12
Days are coloured bubbles
that float upon the surface of fathomless night.
13
My offerings are too timid to claim your remembrance
and therefore you may remember them.
14
Leave out my name from the gift
if it be a burden,
but keep my song.
13
April, like a child,
writes hieroglyphics on dust with flowers,
wipes them and forgets.
16
Memory, the priestess,
kills the present
and offers its heart to the shrine of the dead past.
**4
17
From th{e} solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play
and forgets the priest.
18
My mind starts up at some flash on the flow
of its thoughts
like a brook at a sudden liquid note of its own
that is never repeated.
19
In the mountain, stillness surges up
to explore its own height;
in the lake movement stands still
to contemplate its own depth.
20
The departing night’s one kiss
on the closed eyes of morning
glows in the star of dawn.
21
Maiden, thy beauty is like a fruit
which is yet to mature,
tense with an unyielding secret.
22
Sorrow that has lost its memory
is like the dumb dark hours
that have no bird songs
but only the cricket<+++>{’}s chirp.
23
Bigotry tries to keep t<+++>{r}uth safe in its hand
with a grip that kills it.
**5
24
Wishing to hearten a timid lamp
great night lightens all her stars.
25
The sky though holding in his arms his bride,
the earth,
is ever immensely away.
26
God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
27
The soil in return for her service
keeps the tree tied to her,
the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.
28
The immortal, like a jewel,
does not boast
of a larg{e} surface in years,
but of a shining point
in a moment.
29
The child ever dwells in the mystery of an ageless time
unobscured by the dust of history.
30
There is a light laughter in the steps of creation
that carries it swiftly across time.
31
One who was distant came near to me in the morning,
and came still nearer when taken away by night.
**6
32
White and pink oleanders meet
and make merry in different dialects.
33
When peace is active sweeping its dirt,
it is storm.
34
The lake <+++>{l}ies low by the hill,—
a tearful entreaty of love
at the foot of the inflexible.
35
There smiles the Divine Child
among his playthings of unmeaning clouds
and ephemeral lights and shadows.
36
The breeze whispers to the lotus,
“What is thy secret?”
“It is myself,” says the lotus, “s<y>{t}eal it and I disappear”.
37
The freedom of the storm and the bondage of the ste<a>m
join hands in the dance of swaying branches.
38
The Jasmine<+++>{’}s lisping of love to the sun
is her flowers.
39
The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom
and yet to keep it for himself.
40
Gods, tired of their paradise, envy man.
**7
41
Clouds are hills in vapour,
hills are clouds in stone,—
a phantasy in time’s dream.
42
While God waits for his temple to be build of love
men bring stones.
43
Unimpassioned benevolence
insults the taste of the tongue,
only pitying the stomach’s need.
44
I touch God in my song
as the ৲hill touches the৲ ৴far-away৴ sea
with its waterfall.
45
Light finds her treasure of colours
through the contradiction of clouds.
46
My heart today smiles at its past night of tears
like a wet tree glistening in the sun
after rain is over.
47
I have thanked the trees that have made my life fruitful,
but have failed to remember the grass that has ever
kept it green.
**8
48
The one without second is emptiness
the other one makes it true.
49
Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.
50
They expect thanks for the banished nest
because their cage is shapely and secure.
51
In my love I pay my endless debt to thee
for what thou art.
52
The bottom of the pond, from its dark,
sends up its lyrics in lilies,
and the sun says, they are good.
53
Your calumny against the great
is impious,
it hurts yourself;
against the small it is mean,
for it hurts the victim.
54
The first flower that blossomed on this earth
was an invitation to me to sing.
55
Dawn— the many-coloured flower— fades,
and the sun comes out, the fruit of the simple
white light.
**9
56
The muscle that has a doubt of its wisdom
throtles the voice that would cry.
57
Wind tries to take Flame by storm
only to blow her out.
58
Life’s play runs fast,
life’s playthings fall behind one by one
and are forgotten.
59
My flower, seek not thy paradise
in a fool’s buttonhole.
60
Thou hast risen late, my crescent moon,
but my night bird is still awake to greet you.
61
Darkness is the veiled bride
silently waiting for the errant light
to return to her bosom.
62
Trees are the earth{’s} endless effort to speak
to the listening heaven.
63
My self’s burden is lightened
when I laugh at myself.
64
The weak can be terrible because
he furiously tries to appear strong.
**10
65
Try to break the difference and it is multiplied.
By acknowledging it unity is gained.
66
Breezes come from the sky,
the anchor desperately clutches the mud,
and my boat is heating its breast against the chain.
67
The spirit of death is one, the spirit of life
is many.
When God is dead religion becomes one.
68
The blue of the sky longs for the earth’s green,
the wind between them sighs, <“ALAS”.> “{Alas.”}
69
Day’s pain, {that was} muffled by <+++> {the} glare,
burns among stars
in the night.
70
The stars crowd round the virgin night in silent awe
at her loneliness
that can never be touched.
71
Darkness smothers the one into uniformity.
Light reveals the one in its multifariousness.
72
The cloud gives all its gold
to the departing sun
and greets the rising moon
with only a pale smile.
**11
<±{72
The Thorn in his point has a logic of fact
which must be noticed,
The Flower in her loveliness has a mystery of harmony
which can be ignored.}
73
He who does good comes to the temple gate,
he who loves reaches the shrine.
<+++
Let him take note of the thorn
who can see the flower as a whole.>
7<5>{4}
Flower, have pity for the worm,
it is not a bee,
its love is a blunder and a burden.
76
By the ruins off terror{’}s triumph
the children build their doll’s house.
77
The lamp waits through the long day of neglect
for the flame’s kiss in the night.
78
If you kick the dust it troubles the air,
sprinkling of water helps you best.
79
Feathers in the dust lying lazily content
have forgotten their sky.
80
The flower which is single need not envy the thorns
that are numerous.>
**12
81
The world suffers most from the disinterested tyranny
of its well-wisher.
82
We gain freedom when we have paid
the full price for our right to live.
83
<y>{Y}our moment’s<+++> careless gifts,
like the meteors of an autumn night,
catch fire in the depth of my being.
84
The faith waiting in the heart of a seed
promises a miracie of life which it cannot prove at once.
85
Spring hesitates at winter’s door,
but the mango-blossom rashly runs out to him
before her time and meets her doom.
86
The world is the ever-changing foam that floats on the
surface of a sea of silence.
87
The two separeted shores mingle their voices
in a song of unfathomed tears.
88
The work finds its fulfilment in the depth of a leisure
like the river in the sea.
89
I lingered on my way
till thy cherry tree lost its blossoms,
but the azalea brings to me, my love,
thy forgiveness.
**13
90
The shy little pomegranate bud,
blushing to-day behind her veil,
will burst into a passionate flower
tomorrow when I am away.
91
The clumsiness of power spoils the key,
and uses the pickaxe.
92
Birth is from the mystery of night
into the greater mystery of day.
93
These paper boats of mine
are {for} dancing on the <+++>{r}ipples of hours
and not for reaching any destination.
94
Migratory songs from my heart
are on wings
<S>{s}eeking their nests in love’s voice
in thee.
95
The sea of danger, doubt and denial
around man’s little island of certainty
challenges him across into the unknown.
96
Love punishes when it forgives,
and the injured beauty by its awful silence.
<+++>
**14
97
You live alone and unrecompensed
because they are afraid of your great worth.
98
The same sun is newly born in new lands
in a ring of endless dawns.
99
God’s world is ever renewed by death,
a Titan’s ever crushed by its own existence.
100
The glow-worm while exploring the dust
never knows that stare are in the sky.
10<+++>{+++}
The tree is of to-day, the flower is old,
it brings with it the message
of the immemorial seed.
103
Each rose that cames brings me greetings
from the <r>{R}ose of an <E>{e}ternal <S>{s}pring.
104
God honours me when I work,
He loves me when I sing.
105
My love of today finds herself homeless
in the deserted nest of yesterday’s love.
106
The fire of pain traces for my soul a luminous path
across her sorrow.
**15
107
The grass survives the hill through its resurrections
across countless deaths.
108
Realism boasts of its burden of sands
and forgets its loss in the current.
109
Thou hast vanished from my reach
leaving in the sky an impalpable touch in its blueness{,}
in the wind an invisible image
in its movement among the forest shadows.
110
Spring in pity for the desolate branch
left to it a kiss that fluttered in{ }a lonely leaf.
111
The shy shadow in the garden
loves the sun in silence.
Flowers guess the secret,
and smile, while the leaves whisper.
112
I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I had my flight.
113
The fireflies{;} twinkling among leaves{,}
make the stars wonder.
114
The mountain remains unmoved
at its seeming defeat by the mist.
115
While the rose said to the <S>{s}un
“I shall ever remember thee”
her petals fell to the dust.
**16
116
The Devil’s wares are expensive,
God’s gifts are without price.
117
Hills are the earth’s gesture of despair
for the unreachable.
118
Though the thorn pricked me in thy flower,
O Beauty,
I am grateful.
119
The world ever knows
that the few are more than the many.
120
Let not my love be a burden on you, my friend,
know that it pays itself.
121
Dawn plays her l<I>{u}te before the gate of darkness,
and is content to vanish when the sun comes out.
122
Truth’s smile is beauty
When she beholds her own{ }face in a perfect mirror.
123
The dew-drop knows the sun
only within its own tiny orb.
124
Forlorn thoughts from the forsaken hives of all ages,
swarming in the air, hum round my heart
and seek my voice.
**16
125
The desert is imprisoned in the wall of its unbounded
barrenness.
126
I see the air’s invisible dance
in the thrills of little leaves,
the secret<->heart-beats of the sky in their glimmer.
127
He owns the world who knows its law<s>,
he who feels its t<+++>{r}uth loves it.
128
You are like a flowering tree,
amazed when I praise you for your gifts.
129
The earth’s sacrificial fire
flames up in her trees—
scattering sparks in flowers.
130
Forests, the clouds of earth,
hold up to the sky their silence,
and clouds from above come down
in resonant showers.
131
The world speaks to me in pictures,
my soul answers in music.
132
The sky tells its beads all night
on the countless stars
in memory of the sun.
<133
The darkness of night, like pain,
is dumb,
and darkness <+++>{d}awn>
**18
133
The darkness of night, like pain,
is dumb,
<and> {the} darkness of dawn, like peace,
is silent.
134
Pride engraves his frowns in stones,
love offers her surrender in flowers.
135
The obse<a>qious brush curtails truth
in deference to the canvas
which is narrow.
136
I see an unseen kiss from the sky
in its response in my rose.
137
The hill in its longing for the far away sky
wishes to be like the cloud
with its endless urge of seeking.
138
To justify their own spilling of ink
They spell the day as night.
139
Profit laughs at goodness
when the good is profitable.
140
In its swelling pride
the bubble doubts the truth of the sea,
and laughs and bursts into emptiness.
**19
141
Love is an endless mys<r>{t}ry,
for it has nothing else to explain it.
142
My clouds, sorrowing in the dark,
forget that they themselves
have hidden the sun.
143
Man discovers his own wealth
When God comes to ask gifts of him.
144
You leave your memory as a flame
to my lonely lamp of separation.
145
I came to offer thee a flower,
but thou must have all my garden.
It is thine.
146
The picture— a memory if light
treasured by the shadow.
147
It is easy to make faces at the sun,
he is exposed by his own light to all directions.
148
Love remains a secret
even when spoken about,
for only a lover truly knows
that he is loved.
149
History slowly smothers its truth,
but hastily struggles to revive it
in the terrible penance of pain.
**20
150
My work is rewarded in daily wages,
I wait for my own final value in love.
151
Beauty knows to say, “Enough”,
barbarism clamours for still more.
152
God loves to see in me not his servant
but himself who serves all.
153
The darkness of night is in harmony with day,—
the morning of mist is discordant
154
In the bounteous time of roses
love is wine,
<I>{i}t is food in the famished hour
when their petals are shed.
155
The morning lamp on the lamp-post
mockingly challenges the sun
with the light it has borrowed from him.
156
An unknown flower in a strange land
speaks to the poet:
“Are we not of the same soil, my lover?”
157
I am able to love my God
because he gives me freedom to deny him.
158
My untuned strings beg for music
in their anguished cry of shame.
**21
159
The worm thinks it strange and foolish
that man does not eat his books.
160
The clouded sky today bears the vision of the shadow
of a divine sadness
on the forhead of brooding eternity.
161
The shade of my trees is for passers-by,
its fruit for the one for whom I wait.
162
Flushed with the glow of sunset
earth seems like a ripe fruit ready to be harvested by night.
163
Light accepts darkness for his spouse
for the sake of creation.
164
The reed waits for his Master{’}s breath,
the Master goes seeking for his reed.
165
To the blind pen the hand that writes
is unreal,
its writing unmeaning.
166
In thine own self is forged a chain
with which thy tyrant binds thee.
167
The sea smites his own barren breast
because he has no flowers to offer to the moon.
**22
168
The greed for fruit misses the flower.
169
God in his temple of stars
waits for man to bring him his lamp.
170
The fire restrained in the tree fashions flowers.
Released from bonds, the shameless flame dies
in barren ashes.
171
Too ready to blame the bad,
<T>{t}oo reluctant to praise the good.
172
The sky sets no snare to capture the moon,
it is his own freedom which binds him.
173
The light that fills the sky
seeks its limit in a dewdrop on the grass.
174
Wealth is the burden of bigness,
Welfare the fullness of being.
175
The razor-blade is proud of its keen{n}ess
when it sneers at the sun.
176
The butterfly has leisure
to love the lotus,
not the bee busily storing honey.
**23
177
Child, thou bringest to my heart the babble of the wind
and water,
<T>{t}he flowers’ speechless secrets, the clouds’ dreams,
the mute gaze of wonder of the morning
sky.
178
The rainbow among the clouds may be great
but the little butterfly among the bushes is greater.
179
The mist weaves her net round the morning,
captivates him, and makes him blind.
180
The Morning Star whispers to Dawn
“Tell me that you are only for me”.
“Y<E>{e}<S>{s},” she answers, “and also
only for that nameless flower.”
181
The sky remains infinitely vacant
for earth to build there
its heaven with dreams.
182
Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection.
183
Let the evening forgive the mistakes of the day
and thus win peace for herself.
184
Beauty smiles in the confinement of the bud,
in the heart of a sweet incompleteness.
**24
185
Your flitting love lightly brushed with its wings
my sunflower
and never asked if her honey was ready to be surrendered.
186
Leaves are masses of silence
round flowers which are their words.
187
Love attracts and unites,
Power binds with chain.
188
The tree bears its thousands of years
as one large majestic moment.
189
My offerings are not for the temple at the end of the road,
but for the wayside shrines that surprise me at every bend.
190
Your smile, my love,
like the smell of a strange flower,
seems simple
and yet inexplicable.
191
Death laughs when we exaggerate the merit of the dead,
for it swells his store with more them he can claim.
192
The sigh of the shore follows in vain
the breeze that hastens the ship
across the sea.
**25
193
Truth loves its limits,
for there it meets the beautiful.
194
Between the shores of Me and Thee
there is the loud ocean, my own surging <+++> self,
which I long to cross.
195
The right to possess foolishly boasts
of its right to enjoy.
196
The rose is a great deal more
than a blushing apology for its thorn.
197
The Eternal Dancer dances
in the flower in spring,
in the harvest in autumn,
in thy limbs, my child,
in thy thoughts and dreams.
198
Day offers to the silence of stars
his golden lute to be tuned
for the endless life.
199
The wise knows how to teach,
the fool how to smite.
200
The centre is still and silent in the heart
of an eternal dance of circles.
20<+++>{1}
The judge thinks that he is just when he compares
the oil of another’s lamp
with the light of his own.
**26
202
The captive flower in the King’s w<+++>{r}eath
bitterly smiles when the meadow-flower envies her.
203
Its store of snow is the hill’s own burden.
<I>{i}ts outpouring of streams is borne by all the world.
204
Listen to the prayer of the forest
for its freedom in flowers.
20<5>{3}
Let your love see me
even through the barrier of near{n}ess.
206
The spirit of work in creation is there
to carry and help the spirit of play.
207
To carry the burden of the instrument,
count the cost of its material,
and never to know that it is for music,
is the tragedy of life’s deafness.
208
Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.
209
I bring to thee, night, my day’s empty cup,
to be cleaned with thy cool darkness
or a new morning’s festival.
2<+++>0
The mountain fir keeps hidden
the memory of its struggle with the storm
murmuring in its rustling boughs
a hymn of peace.
**27
211
God honoured me with his fight,
when I was rebellious,
he ignored me when I was languid
212
The man proud of his sect thinks
that he has the sea
ladled into his private pond.
213
In the shady depth of life
are the lonely nests of memories
that shrink from words.
214
Let my love feel its strength
in the service of day,
its peace in the union of night.
215
Life sends up in blades of grass
its silent hymn of praise
to the unnamed Light.
216
The stars of night are the memorials for me
of my day’s faded flowers.
217
Open thy door to that which must go,
for the loss becomes unseemly when obstructed.
218
True end is not in the reaching of the limit,
but in a completion which is limitless.
**28
219
The shore whispers to the sea:
“Write to me what thy waves struggle to say”.
The sea writes in foam again and again
and wipes off the lines in a boisterous despair.
220
Let the touch of thy finger thrill my life’s strings
and make the music thine and mine.
221
The inner world rounded in my life, like a fruit,
matured in joy and sorrow,
will drop into the darkness of the original soil
for some further cour{s}e of creation.
222
Form is in Matter, rhythm in Force,
meaning in the Person.
223
There are seekers of wisdom and seekers of wealth,
I seek thy company so that I may sing.
224
Like the tree its leaves, I scatter my speech
on the dus<+++>{t},
<+++> {Let} my words unuttered flower in thy silence.
225
My faith in truth, my vision of the perfect,
help thee, Master, in thy creation.
226
All th{e} delights that I have felt
in life’s fruits and flowers
let me offer to thee
at the end of the feast,
in a perfect unity
of love.
**29
227
Some have thought deep
and explored the meaning of thy truth,
and they are great:
I have listened to catch the music
of thy play,
and I am glad.
228
The tree is a winged spirit
released from the bondage of seed,
pursuing its adventure of life
across the unknown.
229
The lotus offers its beauty to the heaven.
The grass its service to the earth.
230
The sun’s kiss mellows the miserliness
of the green fruit clinging to its stem<m>
into an abandonment.
231
The flame met the earthen lamp in me
and what a great marvel of light.
232
Mistakes live in the neighbourhood of truth
and therefore delude us.
233
The cloud laughed at the rainbow
saying that it was an upstart
gaudy in its emptiness.
The rainbow calmly answered
“I am as inevitably real as the sun himself.”
**30
234
Let me not grope in vain in the dark
but keep my mind still in the faith
that the day<b>will break
and truth will appear in the majesty
of its simplicity.
235
Through the silent night
I hear the knockings at my heart
of the morning’s vagrant hope coming back.
236
My new love comes
bringing to me the eternal wealth
of the old.
237
The earth gazes at the moon and wonders
that he should have all his music in his smile.
238
Day with its glare of curiosity
makes the stars disappear.
239
My mind has its true union with thee,
o sky,
at the window which is mine own,
and not in the open
where thou hast thy sole kingdom.
240
Man claims God’s flowers as his own
when he weaves them in a garland.
**31
241
The buried city uncovered
before the sun of a new age
is ashamed that it has lost all its songs.
242
Like my heart’s pain that has long
missed its meaning,
the sun’s rays robed in dark
hide themselves under the ground.
Like my heart’s pain,
at love’{s} sudden touch
they change their veil at the spring’s call
and come out in the carnival of colours
in flowers and leaves.
243
The vacansy in my life’s flute
waits for its final music
like the primal darkness
before the stars came out.
244
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
is no freedom for the tree.
243
The tapestry of life’s story is woven
by the joining and breaking of the threads
of life’s ties.
246
Those thoughts of mine that are never captured by words
<+++> {perch upon my songs and dance.}
247
My soul tonight loses itself
in the silent heart of a tree
standing alone among the whispers
of immensity.
**32
248
Pearl shells cast up by the sea
on death’s barren beach—
a magnificent wastfulness
of creative life.
249
The sunlight opens for me the world’s gate,
the light of love its treasure.
250
My life has its play of colours
through its thwarted hopes
and gains incomplete,
like the reed through its gaps.
251
Let not my thanks to thee
rob my silence of its fuller homage.
252
Life’s aspiration comes
in the guise of a child.
253
The faded flower sighs
that the spring has vanished for ever.
254
The fruit that I have gained for ever
is that which thou hast accepted.
255
In my life’s garden my wealth has been
of the shadows and lights
that are never gathered and stored.
256
The jasmine knows the sun to be her brother in the heaven.
**33
257
Light is young, the ancient light;
shadows are of the moment
they are born old.
25<+++>{8}
I feel that the ferry of my songs at the day’s end
will bring me across to the other shore of all things
from where I shall see.
25<+++>{9}
My songs are to sing
that I have loved Thy singing.
260
When the voice of the silent
touches my words
I know him and therefore I know my<+++>{s}elf.
261
Men form constellations
with stars that are their own stories
churned up from the fiery mist
of their passions{,} power and dreams
eddying into living spheres.
262
My last salutations {are} to them
who knew me imperfect
and loved me.
263
Love’s gift can not be given{,}
<It> {it} waits to be accepted.
**34
264
When death comes and whispers to me
“Thy days are ended,”
let me say to him, “I have lived in love
and not in mere time.”
He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?”
I shall say “I know not,
but this I know that often when I sang
I found my eternity.”
265
Before the end of my journy
may I reach within myself
the one which is the all,
leaving the other thing in me
to float away with the drifting multitude
upon the current of chance and change.
