নির্মল প্রত্যুষে আজি যত ছিল পাখি
বনে বনে শাখে শাখে উঠিয়াছে ডাকি।
দোয়েল শ্যামার কণ্ঠে আনন্দ-উচ্ছ্বাস,
গেয়ে গেয়ে পাপিয়ার নাহি মিটে আশ।
করুণ মিনতিস্বরে অশ্রান্ত কোকিল
অন্তরের আবেদনে ভরিছে নিখিল।
কেহ নাচে, কেহ গায়, উড়ে মত্তবৎ,
ফিরিয়া পেয়েছে যেন হারানো জগৎ।
পাখিরা জানে না কেহ আজি বর্ষশেষ,
বকবৃদ্ধ-কাছে নাহি শুনে উপদেশ।
যতদিন এ আকাশে এ জীবন আছে,
বরষের শেষ নাহি তাহাদের কাছে।
মানুষ আনন্দহীন নিশিদিন ধরি
আপনারে ভাগ করে শতখানা করি।

সজীব খেলনা যদি
গড়া হয় বিধাতার কর্মশালে,
কী তাহার দশা হয়
তাই করি অনুভব
আজি আয়ুশেষে।
হেথা খ্যাতি মোর পরাহত,
উপেক্ষিত গাম্ভীর্য আমার,
নিষেধে অনুশাসনে
শোওয়া বসা চলে।
"চুপ করে থাকো',
"বেশি কথা কওয়া ভালো নয়',
"আরো কিছু খেতে হবে'--
এ-সকল আদেশ নির্দেশ
কভু ভর্ৎসনায়, কভু অনুনয়ে,
যাহাদের কণ্ঠ হতে আসে
তাহাদের পরিত্যক্ত খেলাঘরে
ভাঙা পুতুলের ট্রাজেডিতে
এই তো সেদিন মাত্র পড়েছে কৈশোর-যবনিকা।
কিছুক্ষণ
বিরোধের স্পর্ধা করি,
তার পরে ভালো ছেলে হয়ে
যেমন চালায় তাই চলি।
মনে ভাবি,
বৃদ্ধ ভাগ্য তার শাসনের ভার
কিছুদিন নূতন ভাগ্যের হাতে
সঁপি দিয়া কটাক্ষে হাসিছে দূরে থেকে,
হেসেছিল যেমন বাদশা
আবুহোসেনের পালা
রচিয়া আড়ালে।
অমোঘ বিধির রাজ্যে বার বার হয়েছি বিদ্রোহী;
এ রাজ্যে নিয়েছি মেনে
সেই দণ্ড
যাহা মৃণালের চেয়ে সুকোমল,
বিদ্যুতের চেয়ে স্পষ্ট
তর্জনী যাহার।

A FEW DAYS ago I said to a distinguished Bengali doctor of medicine, 'I know no German, yet if a translation of a German poet had moved me, I would go to the British Museum and find books in English that would tell me something of his life, and of the history of his thought. But though these prose translations from Rabindra Nath Tagore have stirred my blood as nothing has for years, I shall not know anything of his life, and of the movements of thought that have made them possible, if some Indian traveller will not tell mp.' It seemed to him natural that I should he moved, for he said, 'I read Rabindra Nath every day, to read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.' I said, 'An Englishman living in London in the reign of Richard the Second, had he been shown translations from Petrarch or from Dante, would have found no books to answer his questions, but would have questioned some Florentine banker or Lombard merchant as I question you. For all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new renaissance has been born in your country and I shall never know of it except by hearsay.' He answered, 'We have other poets, but none that are his equal; we call this the epoch of Rabindra Nath. No poet seems to me as famous in Europe as he is among us. He is as great in music as in poetry, and his songs are sung from the west of India into Burmah wherever Bengali is spoken. He was already famous at nineteen when he wrote his first novel; and plays, written when he was but little older, are still played in Calcutta. I so much admire the completeness of his life; when he was very young he wrote much of natural objects, he would sit all day in his garden; from his twenty-fifth year or so to his thirty-fifth perhaps, when he had a great sorrow, he wrote the most beautiful love poetry in our language', and then he said with deep emotion, 'words can never express what I owed at seventeen to his love poetry. After that his art grew deeper, it became religious and philosophical; all the aspirations of mankind are in his hymns. He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but has spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.' I may have changed his well-chosen words in my memory but not his thought: 'A little while ago he was to read divine service in one of our churches-we of the Brahma Samaj use your word "church" in English-it was the largest in Calcutta and not only was it crowded, people even standing in the windows, but the streets were all but impassable because of the people.'
Other Indians came to see me and their reverence for this man sounded strange in our world, where we hide great and little things under the same veil of obvious comedy and half serious depreciation. When we were making the cathedrals had we a like reverence for our great men? 'Every morning at three-I know for I have seen it'-one said to me, 'he sits immovable in contemplation, and for two hours does not awake from his reverie upon the nature of God. His father the Maha Rishi would sometimes sit there all through the next day; once, upon a river, he fell into contemplation because of the beauty of the landscape, and the rowers waited for eight hours before they could continue their journey.' He then told me of Mr Tagore's family and how for generations great men have come out of its cradles. 'Today,' he said, 'there are Gogonendranath and Abanindranath Tagore, who are artists; and Dwijendranath, Rabindra Nath's brother, who is a great philosopher. The squirrels come from the boughs and climb on to his knees and the birds alight upon his hands.' I notice in these men's thought a sense of visible beauty and meaning as though they held that doctrine of Nietzsche that we must not believe in the moral or intellectual beauty which does not sooner or later impress itself upon physical things. I said, 'In the East you know how to keep a family illustrious. The other day the curator of a Museum pointed out to me a little dark-skinned man who was arranging their Chinese prints and said, "That is the hereditary connoisseur of the Mikado, he is the fourteenth of his family to hold the post." ' He answered. 'When Rabindra Nath was a boy he had all round him in his home literature and music.' I thought of the abundance, of the simplicity of the poems, and said, 'In your country is there much propagandist writing, much criticism? We have to do so much, especially in my own country, that our minds gradually, cease to be creative, and yet we cannot help it. If our life was not a continual warfare, we would not have taste, we would not know what is good, we would not find hearers and readers. Four-fifths of our energy is spent in the quarrel with had taste, whether in our own minds or in the minds of others.' 'I understand,' he replied, 'we too have our propagandist writing. In the villages they recite long mythological poems adapted from the Sanscrit in the Middle Ages, and they often insert passages telling the people that they must do their duties.