Rabindranath Tagore
Last Poems
7
I know life is sacred.
One knows not by what unseen path she has come,
Rising from the fountain of the Unknown,
And taken form in wondrous reality.
Filling his golden pitcher
The sun bathes and purifies life each morning.
The life has given voice
To the day, to the night;
It decks with flowers the temple
For the worship of the Unseen,
And in silent twilight
Kindles the lamp of evening.
Her first love
Life offered to the world.
At her golden touch
All my daily loves blossom forth —
I have loved my beloved,
I have loved the flowers of this world;
Whatever she touches,
She makes it her very own.
With a look she enters the world —
At first the pages are bare,
Gradually they fill,
And when the day ends
The picture becomes clear
And the beads of self-knowledge are strung together.
Then the heedless artist
Draws a black line
Through the letters;
But a few remain —
Those in letters of gold.
They shine along with the Pole Star —
A delight to the heavens.
25 April 1941
from Wings of Death
the last poems of Rabindranath Tagore
translated from the Bengali by
Aurobindo Bose
(John Murray)
A Bengali mystic, philosopher, poet and music composer, Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861 and passed away in 1941 writing poems right up until the end. Known to write a poem every day, he dictated one the day of his final surgery from which he never regained conscious. In 1913 he won the Nobel Prize for poetry. These last poems, during the years when the poet was in chronic illness, are considered some of his finest work. He died in the home where he was raised.
