Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore FRAS, also written Ravīndranātha Thākura, sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 May 1861
CityKolkata, India
CountryIndia
Brahma was excessively sparing with earth, water, and fire.... The reckless expenditure of air and ether in his composition was amazing. And, in consequence, he perpetually struggled to outreach the wind, to outrun space itself. Other animals ran only when they had a reason, but the Horse would run for no reason whatever, as if to run out of his own skin.
Power said to the world, "You are mine." The world kept it prisoner on her throne. Love said to the world, "I am thine." The world gave it the freedom of her house.
Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day and night; it is not of the earth. But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust. Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet body, my child, in your palpitating heart. The sea is beating its drums in joy, the flowers are a-tiptoe to kiss you. For heaven is born in you, in the arms of the mother- dust.
Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed.
Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.
Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin... Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.
I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad I have had my flight.
A thorn can only be extracted if you know where it is.
This I know... That often when I sang, and drummed, and danced, I found my eternity.
Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.