Prometheus Unbound

Dancing Woman by Rabindranath Tagore

     This is the day which down the void abysm
     At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
       And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
     Love, from its awful throne of patient power
     In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
       Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
     And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
     And folds over the world its healing wings.

     Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
     These are the seals of that most firm assurance
       Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
     And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
     Mother of many acts and hours, should free
       The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
     These are the spells by which to reassume
     An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

     To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
     To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
       To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
     To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
       Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
     This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
     Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
     This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

      - From Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Threshold

Passage by Neha

[We know that we must at last forsake the world, and we are accustomed in moments of weariness or exaltation to consider a voluntary forsaking; but how can we, who have read so much poetry, seen so many paintings, listened to so much music, where the cry of the flesh and the cry of the soul seems one, forsake it harshly and rudely? - W.B. Yeats, September 1912, Introduction to Gitanjali]

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

One

We are all the more one because we are many,
For we have made ample room for love in the gap where we are sundered.
Our unlikeness reveals its breadth of beauty radiant with one common life,
Like mountain peaks in the morning sun.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Fireflies

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.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Creation of a Pot

Rabindranath Tagore, Untitled (Striding Bird), 1928.

Within this earthen vessel are
bowers and groves, and with
it is the creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans
and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel
appraiser
are within;
and within is the eternal soundeth, and
the spring wells up
Kabi says: "Listen to me, my friend!
My beloved lord is within."

- Songs of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore

Phule Phule Dhole Dhole

Phule phule dhole dhole,
Bohey kibaa mridu baay.
Totini hillolo tuley,
Kollole choliya jaay.
Piko kibaa kunje kunje,
Piko kibaa kunje kunje,
Kuhu kuhu kuhu gaay.
Ki jaani kishero laagi,
Praano kore haay-haay.

A touch of sweetness in the breeze that

Softly cradles buds today

A winding stream that gently gurgles

In its happy course at play

The cuckoo sings in trees and gardens

a cuhoo cuhoo cuhoo lay

My absent heart does not know why

It's absolutely borne away

- Rabindranath Tagore, Featured in Satyajit Ray's Charulata 

I love these versions: 

# 1. From Satyajit Ray's 1964 movie "Charulata" based on Rabindranath Tagore's Novel "Nastanirh" 

# 2. This back to back amalgamation with a Scottish song by Robert Burns

# 3. This traditional Rabindra Sangeet version
# 4. This Parineeta song which is inspired by and based on the same tune

(Poem #1714) Geetanjali

Supermoon by Neha

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.
I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best
friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room
The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death;
I hate it, yet hug it in love.
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; 
yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

The Journey - Geetanjali

Belonging by Neha

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, 
and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds 
leaving my track on many a star and planet.
It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, 
and that training is the most intricate 
which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, 
and one has to wander through all the outer worlds 
to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said 'Here art thou!'
The question and the cry 'Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams
and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance 'I am!'

-XII, Geetanjali, Rabindranath Tagore 

Geetanjali

"The Flight" by Neha

The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has

jeweled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play;

his dress hampers him at every step.

In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps

himself from the world, and is afraid even to move.

Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keeps one

shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob

one of the right of entrance to the great fair of

common human life.

- Geetanjali, VIII, Rabindranath Tagore 

Where the mind is without fear....

Source: Bird of Paradise by Audi speed

( See image information below)

.

.

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

.

Rabindranath Tagore

.

.

Image Information : This image is from http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=446730983&size=m