Gitanjali 68
Thy sunbeam comes upon this earth of mine with arms outstretched andstands at my door the livelong day to carry back to thy feet cloudsmade of my tears and sighs and songs.
With fond delight thou wrappest about thy starry breast that mantle ofmisty cloud, turning it into numberless shapes and folds and colouringit with hues everchanging.
It is so light and so fleeting, tender and tearful and dark, that iswhy thou lovest it, O thou spotless and serene. And that is why it maycover thy awful white light with its pathetic shadows.
Words in this poem
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- livelong a.
- Whole; entire; long in passing; -- used of time, as day or night, in adverbial phrases, and usually with a sense of tediousness. [For lifelong. Cf. Lifelong.]
- starry a.
- Abounding with stars; adorned with stars.
- numberless a.
- Innumerable; countless.
- colouring n.
- The act of applying color to; also, that which produces color.
- tearful a.
- Abounding with tears; weeping; shedding tears; as, tearful eyes.
- pathetic a.
- Expressing or showing anger; passionate. [L. patheticus, Gr. pathétique. See Pathos.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Gitanjali 68 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 68, in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7164, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tagore-gitanjali/poem-68.html, id L27930.
About this section
Gitanjali 68 is prose, printed in 3 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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