Gitanjali 11
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thouworship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where thepathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, andhis garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even likehim come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himselfhas joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with usall for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet himand stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.
Words in this poem
- pathmaker n.
- One who, or that which, makes a way or path.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Gitanjali 11 is in the public domain. This text is taken from Gitanjali (Song Offerings), a collection of prose translations made by the author from the original Bengali, with an introduction by W. B. Yeats (India Society, London, 1912), Project Gutenberg ebook #7164; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali 11, in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7164, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tagore-gitanjali/poem-11.html, id L27873.
About this section
Gitanjali 11 is prose, printed in 4 paragraphs. It is part of the edition and is kept for reading, but nothing here is measured: the line breaks are the printer's, so no metre, rhyme scheme or scansion is stated.
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