GRATIFICATION

By Rabindranath Tagore
The moment when tears flooded mine eyes in a monsoon of sorrow,
Before the threshold of my heart stopped the chariot of my friend.
By handing over to Him the chalice of union that was brimming
With separation and pain, I have no more regrets, regrets none.
Gathering secretly in my mind, a hope, neglected for years...
That thirst for a touch was quenched in a twinkling of eye.
I knew at last for whom I shed all my tears :
Blessed be this awakening, blessed these tears, blessed all.

___________________

REGRETS

By Rabindranath Tagore
Why did I not strew the dry dust with my tears ?
Who could guess that You would appear like an uninvited ?
You have waded through the desert sand
Without any shadowy tree,
I imposed on You this dire wayfaring,
Curse on me!
Whereas I had been whiling away my idle days
In the shade of my home,
I ignored all that you suffered
At every step.
That suffering, however, inside my being
Had resounded with a secret smart,
Stigmatising my heart with a profound wound.

THIS FLAME OF MELODY

By Rabindranath Tagore
This flame of melody that You have set inside my heart,
That flame has pervaded all through-and-through.
Dances that flame while keeping the beats
From branch to branch upon worn out trees :
Whom does it invoke in the sky
With the elated hands ?
The stars stare dumb-founded in the dark,
Maddened a wind rises from nowhere
Immaculate, at the dead of the night,
Blossoms this golden lotus :
None can fathom the spell of that flame.

EXPECTATION

By Rabindranath Tagore
You remain ever present
Beyond my songs,
My melodies reach Your feet
Though I cannot attain You.
The wind bids imploring :
"Do not keep mooring the raft !"
Steering across, come up
To the centre of my heart.
The game of my songs with You
Is a game with the remoteness,
The aching notes of the flute
Throughout all day.
Seizing my flute, when shall You
Come over and blow into it,
In the dense obscurity
Of a joyous and mute night ?

Conviction

By Rabindranath Tagore
Gratifying all my thorns,
The flower shall bloom,
And all my suffering
Shall redden into a rose.
In my life-long craving for the sky
Zephyr shall rush to blow,
Maddening my heart it will
Plunder all fragrant treasures.
I shall feel no more amiss
Once I have treasures to share,
Once my intimate worship blossoms
In beauteous forms.
When by the end of night
My Beloved shall caress them,
All the petals unto the last
Will bedeck His feet.

_________________

REFT FROM LOVE

By Rabindranath Tagore
If You cared not to fill the heart with love
Why did You permeate the morning sky
With abundant songs ?
Why weave wreaths with the stars ?
Why the flowery beds ?
Why does the west-wind murmur
A secret message in our ears ?
If You cared not to fill the heart with love,
Why keeps the sky staring at us

Intently ?
Why does my heart frequently
Become enraged
Embarking the raft on an ocean
Where the shore remains unknown ?

KNOWING YOU

      By Rabindranath Tagore
Countless are the persons You made me know,
Sheltered me in countless homes,
You turned the distant into an intimate, O Friend,
And the foreigner into a brother.
Each time I have to leave an old dwelling
My mind gets worried not to know what is up
Forgetting that You remain the familiar
In the midst of the new,
You turned the distant into an intimate, O Friend,
And the foreigner into a brother.
In life or in death, in the totality of this globe,
Wherever you choose to carry me,
O my life-long acquaintance,
Whatever You will reveal to me.
Others cease to be strangers once You are known,
Taboos vanish and vanishes all fear;
You remain wakeful by uniting everybody
May I always realise it,
You turned the distant into an intimate, O Friend,
And the foreigner into a brother.

_____________________

SURRENDER

           By Rabindranath Tagore
O bend my head up to the dust of Your feet,
Wash out all my vanity with mine own tears.
Seeking ever to glorify my self
I keep on merely humiliating myself,
Ceaselessly winding around myself
I roam about from moment to moment
Wash out all my vanity with mine own tears.
Let me no more vaunt myself in mine occupation,
Accomplish Your own will throughout my life.
I long for the absolute peace from You,
Inside my being Your effulgence,
Protect me by standing on the lotus of my heart,
Wash out all my vanity with mine own tears.

The Chorus of Old Men in “Aegeus”

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ye gods that have a home beyond the world,
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony,
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen, —
Look with a just regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a suffering world where men grow old
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,
Out of the flare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
Into the mist they go,
Into the mist of death.
O shades of you that loved him long before
The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,
May loyal arms and ancient welcomings
Receive him once again
Who now no longer moves
Here in this flickering dance of changing days,
Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath,
And the black master Death is over all,

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The master-songs are ended, and the man
That sang them is a name. And so is God
A name; and so is love, and life, and death,
And everything. But we, who are too blind
To read what we have written, or what faith
Has written for us, do not understand:
We only blink, and wonder.
Last night it was the song that was the man,
But now it is the man that is the song.
We do not hear him very much to-day:
His piercing and eternal cadence rings
Too pure for us — too powerfully pure,
Too lovingly triumphant, and too large;
But there are some that hear him, and they know
That he shall sing to-morrow for all men,
And that all time shall listen.
The master-songs are ended? Rather say
No songs are ended that are ever sung,
And that no names are dead names. When we write
Men’s letters on proud marble or on sand,
We write them there forever.

The Night Before

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;
Mark every feature, — chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson
You read there; measure my nose, and tell me
Where I am wanting! A man’s nose, Dominie,
Is often the cast of his inward spirit;
So mark mine well. But why do you smile so?
Pity, or what? Is it written all over,
This face of mine, with a brute’s confession?
Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?
Or is it because there is something better —
A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow
Of something that’s followed me down from childhood —
Followed me all these years and kept me,
Spite of my slips and sins and follies,
Spite of my last red sin, my murder, —
Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind?
And you smile for that? You’re a good man, Dominie,
The one good man in the world who knows me, —
My one good friend in a world that mocks me,
Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it
To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying?
Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened?
I, who swore I should go to the scaffold

Supremacy

Supremacy by Edwin Arlington Robinson
There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
From all the common gloom removed afar:
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.
I walked among them and I knew them well:
Men I had slandered on life’s little star
For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar
Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way,
Into the dark they vanished, one by one,
Till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day,
The dream of all my glory was undone, —
And, with a fool’s importunate dismay,
I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

Sonnet

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
When we can all so excellently give
The measure of love’s wisdom with a blow, —
Why can we not in turn receive it so,
And end this murmur for the life we live?
And when we do so frantically strive
To win strange faith, why do we shun to know
That in love’s elemental over-glow
God’s wholeness gleams with light superlative?
Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all,
Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, —
Or anything God ever made that grows, —
Nor let the smallest vision of it slip,
Till you can read, as on Belshazzar’s wall,
The glory of eternal partnership!

Verlaine

Verlaine by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
To touch the covered corpse of him that fled
The uplands for the fens, and rioted
Like a sick satyr with doom’s worshippers?
Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
To tell the story of the life he led.
Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,
And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress
In art’s complete remembrance: nothing clings
For long but laurel to the stricken brow
That felt the Muse’s finger; nothing less
Than hell’s fulfilment of the end of things
Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.

Sonnet

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The master and the slave go hand in hand,
Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave,
And there be kings do sorrowfully crave
The joyance that a scullion may command.
But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand
The mission of his bondage, or the grave
May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save
The perfect word that is the poet’s wand!
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes
Are for Thought’s purest gold the jewel-stones;
But shapes and echoes that are never done
Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes
Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones
The crash of battles that are never won.

The Wilderness

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There’s an old song calling us to come!
Come away! come away! — for the scenes we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;
But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us
In the strangeness of home-coming, and a faithful woman’s eyes.
Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us —
Nothing now to comfort us, but love’s road home: —
Over there beyond the darkness there’s a window gleams to greet us,
And a warm hearth waits for us within.
Come away! come away! — or the roving-fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:
There are no men yet can leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,

There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.
So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we brag the better
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know: —
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.
Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us —
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.

_____________________

The Chorus of Old Men in “Aegeus”

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ye gods that have a home beyond the world,
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony,
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen, —
Look with a just regard,
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,
Here on a suffering world where men grow old
And wander like sad shadows till, at last,
Out of the flare of life,
Out of the whirl of years,
Into the mist they go,
Into the mist of death.
O shades of you that loved him long before
The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,
May loyal arms and ancient welcomings
Receive him once again
Who now no longer moves
Here in this flickering dance of changing days,
Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath,
And the black master Death is over all,
To chill with his approach,
To level with his touch,
The reigning strength of youth,
The fluttered heart of age.
Woe for the fateful day when Delphi’s word was lost —
Woe for the loveless prince of Aethra’s line!
Woe for a father’s tears and the curse of a king’s release —
Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom! —
And thou, the saddest wind
That ever blew from Crete,
Sing the fell tidings back to that thrice unhappy ship! —
Sing to the western flame,

Sing to the dying foam,
A dirge for the sundered years and a dirge for the years to be!
Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day,
Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star,
Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky,
To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore: —
Whether or not there fell
To the touch of an alien hand
The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem,
Better his end had been
To die as an old man dies, —
But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown is ever a crown.

Walt Whitman

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The master-songs are ended, and the man
That sang them is a name. And so is God
A name; and so is love, and life, and death,
And everything. But we, who are too blind
To read what we have written, or what faith
Has written for us, do not understand:
We only blink, and wonder.
Last night it was the song that was the man,
But now it is the man that is the song.
We do not hear him very much to-day:
His piercing and eternal cadence rings
Too pure for us — too powerfully pure,
Too lovingly triumphant, and too large;
But there are some that hear him, and they know
That he shall sing to-morrow for all men,
And that all time shall listen.
The master-songs are ended? Rather say
No songs are ended that are ever sung,
And that no names are dead names. When we write
Men’s letters on proud marble or on sand,
We write them there forever.

_____________________

The Night Before

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;
Mark every feature, — chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson
You read there; measure my nose, and tell me
Where I am wanting! A man’s nose, Dominie,
Is often the cast of his inward spirit;
So mark mine well. But why do you smile so?
Pity, or what? Is it written all over,
This face of mine, with a brute’s confession?
Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?
Or is it because there is something better —
A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow
Of something that’s followed me down from childhood —
Followed me all these years and kept me,
Spite of my slips and sins and follies,
Spite of my last red sin, my murder, —
Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind?
And you smile for that? You’re a good man, Dominie,
The one good man in the world who knows me, —
My one good friend in a world that mocks me,
Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it
To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying?
Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened?
I, who swore I should go to the scaffold
With big strong steps, and — No more. I thank you,

Supremacy

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
From all the common gloom removed afar:
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.
I walked among them and I knew them well:
Men I had slandered on life’s little star
For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar
Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way,
Into the dark they vanished, one by one,
Till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day,
The dream of all my glory was undone, —
And, with a fool’s importunate dismay,
I heard the dead men singing in the sun.