My song has put off her adornments.
She has no pride of dress and decoration.
Ornaments would mar our union;
they would come between thee and me;
their jingling would drown thy whispers.
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight.
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet.
Only let me make my life simple and straight,
like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
NOTE: This poem is sometimes titled, “My song has put off her adornments,” or – simply – Song VII.
How to Love in Sanskrit by Anusha Rao
One Hundred Poems of Kabir by Kabir
On this tree is a bird:
It dances in the joy of life.
No one knows where it is:
And who knows what the burden
Of its music may be?
Where the branches throw a deep shade,
There does it have its nest:
And it comes in the evening
And flies away in the morning,
And says not a word
Of that which it means.
None tell me of this bird
That sings within me.
It is neither coloured nor colourless:
It has neither form nor outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable,
The Infinite, and the Eternal;
And no one marks
When it comes and goes.
Kabir says, âO brother Sadhu!
Deep is the mystery.
Let wise men seek to know
where rests that bird.â
NOTE: This is the translation by Rabindranath Tagore from the 1915 text, One Hundred Poems of Kabir. This is poem #30 (XXX) of that volume.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heave of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
NOTE: This poem is often entitled “Let My Country Awake,” particularly when it is anthologized independently of the larger Gitanjali poem.
Who are you, reader, reading my poems my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring,
ââone single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories
ââof the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning,
ââsending its glad voice across an hundred years.
CHILD, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning. I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig. I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour. Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!" Child, I have forgotten the art of being absorbed in sticks and mud-pies. I seek out costly playthings, and gather lumps of gold and silver. With whatever you find you create your glad games, I spend both my time and my strength over things I never can obtain. In my frail canoe I struggle to cross the sea of desire, and forget that I too am playing a game.
![The Crescent Moon : Poems and Stories [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] Rabindranath Tagore](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1517041908l/38215485._SX98_.jpg)
The Crescent Moon : Poems and Stories [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2017] Rabindranath Tagore by Rabindranath Tagore
Tiger Riding for Beginners 