Gitanjali 40
The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. Thehorizon is fiercely naked—not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, notthe vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and withlashes of lightning startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still andkeen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of themother on the day of the father’s wrath.
Words in this poem
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
- dire a.
- Ill-boding; portentous; as, dire omens. [L. dirus; of uncertain origin.]
- tearful a.
- Abounding with tears; weeping; shedding tears; as, tearful eyes.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Gitanjali 40 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 40, in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7164, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tagore-gitanjali/poem-40.html, id L27902.
About this section
Gitanjali 40 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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