Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali (Song Offerings) #60

Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941):
Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Verse #60:
"On the seashore of endless worlds" (1912)

I still have the slim 64-page green paperback of Tagore's Gitanjali which I bought on July 22, 1963 after graduating from Columbia. The music of his words enchanted me, and I was proud that he was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize (1913). I bought all of Tagore's books in English and read everything by and about him. Photos of Tagore showed his long flowing beard, looking much like a sage. When Tagore toured Argentina, children ran up to him in the streets thinking he was God. The first time Bertrand Russell met Tagore at the airport, he asked without any preliminary small talk— "Tagore, What is beauty?". When Albert Einstein met Tagore, the physicist asked the poet, "What is truth?" It's interesting that the greatest philosopher and physicist of the 20th century when encountering Tagore, asked such basic questions to a poet of wisdom. I shared my joy of Tagore with my sister, and she with her husband David. I was delighted when David gave me a copy of his Ph.D. thesis (1970) from Princeton on high-energy physics, he had Tagore's Verse #60 from Gitanjali in the Prologue of his thesis. This is also my favorite verse of Tagore which I'm including in this anthology. (Peter Y. Chou)

Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Verse #60 (1912)

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky
is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the
seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them
on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets.
Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships,
while children gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.
Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like
a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children,
and pale gleams the smile of the sea beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the patess sky,
ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

— Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
   Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Verse #60
   "On the seashore of endless worlds children meet"
   translated from the Bengali by the author (1912)
   International Pocket Library, Boston, pp. 40-41

• Nobel Prize: Rabindranath Tagore
   (Biography, Presentation & Banquet Speech, Article, Resources)
• Einstein & Tagore on the Nature of Reality
   (Conversation at Caputh, near Potsdam, July 14, 1930)
• Online Text of Gitanjali
   (All 103 Verses of Tagore's Song Offerings in English)