Flight

"The Unnamed Light": Quotes from 'Fireflies' by Rabindranath Tagore (1928)

Author: 

Compiled by Rev. Jan Thomas

Newsletter Issue: 

April 2009

1
I touch God in my song
as the hill touches the far-away sea
with its waterfall.

2
"Let me light my lamp," says the star,
"and never debate
if it will help to remove the darkness."

3
The flame met the earthen lamp in me,
and what a great marvel of light!

4
Between the shores of Me and Thee
there is the loud ocean, my own surging self,
which I long to cross.

5
Life sends up in blades of grass
its silent hymn of praise
to the unnamed Light.

6
The butterfly counts not months
but moments,
and has time enough.

7
Let my love, like sunlight,
surround you
and yet give you illumined freedom.

8
Birth is from
the mystery of night
into the greater mystery of day.

9
Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.

10
My life's empty flute waits for its final music
like the primal darkness before the stars came out.

11
The world is the ever-changing foam
that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.

12
I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.

13
Before the end of my journey
may I reach within myself
the one which is the all,
leaving the outer shell
to float away with the drifting multitude
upon the current of chance and change.

14
When death comes and whispers to me,
"Thy days are ended,"
let me say to him, "I have lived in love
and not in mere time."
He will ask, "Will thy songs remain?"
I shall say, "I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity." 

------------

SOURCE: Fireflies, by Rabindranath Tagore,
The Macmillan Co, 1928 / Rupa & Co., 2002