(From the Bengali of Satyendranath Datta)
MY FLOWERS were like milk and honey and wine; I bound them into a posy with a golden ribbon, but they escaped my watchful care and fled away and only the ribbon remains.
My songs were like milk and honey and wine, they were held in the rhythm of my beating heart, but they spread their wings and fled away, the darlings of the idle hours, and my heart beats in silence.
The beauty I loved was like milk and honey and wine, her lips like the rose of the dawn, her eyes bee-black. I kept my heart silent lest it should startle her, but she eluded me like my flowers and like my songs, and my love remains alone.

I FEEL THAT your brief days of love have not been left behind in those scanty years of your life.
        I seek to know in what place, away from the slow-thieving dust, you keep them now. I find in my solitude some song of your evening that died, yet left a deathless echo; and the sighs of your unsatisfied hours I find nestled in the warm quiet of the autumn noon.
Your desires come from the hive of the past to haunt my heart, and I sit still to listen to their wings.

জর্মন প্রোফেসার    দিয়েছেন গোঁফে সার   কত যে!
     উঠেছে ঝাঁকড়া হয়ে খোঁচা-খোঁচা ছাঁটা ছাঁটা--
     দেখে তাঁর ছাত্রের ভয়ে গায়ে দেয় কাঁটা,
          মাটির পানেতে চোখ      নত যে।
     বৈদিক ব্যাখ্যায় বাণী তাঁর মুখে এসে
     যে নিমেষে পা বাড়ান ওষ্ঠের দ্বারদেশে
          চরণকমল হয়    ক্ষত যে।