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

***************************************************************

THIS IS MY DELIGHT ( Gitanjali, Verse 44)

This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow
    chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.
Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies, greet me
    and speed along the road. My heart is glad within,
    and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet.
From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know
that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when
I shall see.
In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone.
In the meanwhile the air is filling with
the perfume of promise.

***************************************************************

THOU ART THE SKY ( Gitanjali, Verse 67)

Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well.
O thou beautiful, there in the nest is thy love that
    encloses the soul with colours and sounds and odours.
There comes the morning with the golden basket in her right hand
    bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the earth.
And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted by herds,
    through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace
    in her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her
    flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day
    nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Gitanjali: Song Offerings (1912), Verses 35, 44, 67
International Pocket Library, Boston, pp. 26-27, 31, 44-45

Gitanjali | Complete 103 Verses | Yeats' Introduction | 1913 Nobel Prize