Rabindranath Tagore was a revered Indian poet and a Nobel Laureate. It was the time when I was submersed in my first love story. Tagore’s poems seemed to fill up the void among those sweet or not so-sweet memory segments.
I had waited for long for the whole new world and had fantasized a perfect love. Of course, not all first love could turn into happily-ever-after. All the excitement seemed to reach to the peak as I finally heard the confession of his love. Within days, I already concluded the ending of my first love. However, with all my imaginations and curiosities, it indeed became a not-so-boring story that was like those being told in poems, movies and novels. It was a flower, a unique one, that I have found on my journey.
Here are some of the poems from Tagore’s “Stray Birds”.
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.
The world puts off its mask of vastness to his lover.
It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Once we dreamt that we were strangers.
We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.
Some unseen fingers, like idle breeze, are playing upon my heart the music of ripple.
Listen, my heart, to the whispers of the world with which it makes love to you.
Do not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.
What you are you do not see, what you see is you shadow.
I cannot choose the best.
The best chooses me.
That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.
O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror.
My heart beats her waves at the shore of the world and writes upon it her signature in tears with words, “I love thee”.
“Moon, for what do you wait?”
“To salute the sun for whom I must make way.”
Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and find its worth by the claims of love.
The bird wishes it were a cloud. The cloud wishes it were a bird.
I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence.
It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
The starts are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.
Like the meeting of seagulls and the waves we meet and come near.
The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.
Never be afraid of the moments – thus sings the voice of everlasting.
The Perfect decks itself in beauty for the love of the Imperfect.
God says to man, “I heal you therefore I hurt, love you therefore punish.”
The mist, like love, plays upon the heart of the hills and brings our surprises of beauty.
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
“You are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side.” said the dewdrop to the lake.
The mist is like the earth’s desire. It hides the sun for whom she cries.
The dust receives insult and in return offers her flowers.
The leaf becomes flower when it loves.
The flower becomes fruit when it worships.
Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.
The world has opened its heart of light in the morning,
Come out, my heart, with thy love to meet it.
The sunshine greets me with a smile. The rain, his sad sister, talks to my heart.
The best does not come alone. It comes with the company of all.
This life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship.
In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.
Kate's Rose 