I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,

It's ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man's days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

Poem

1861-1941, written in 1890

(translator unknown)

Power said to the world, “You are mine.”

The world kept it prisoner on her throne.

Love said to the world, “I am thine.”

The world gave it the freedom of her house.

Rabindranath Tagore

1861-1941

"I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present."  

- Rabindranath Tagore

I know that this life, missing its ripeness in

love, is not altogether lost.

I know that the flowers that fade in the dawn,

the streams that strayed in the desert, are not

altogether lost.

I know that whatever lags behind, in this life

laden with slowness, is not altogether lost.

I know that my dreams that are still

unfulfilled, and my melodies still unstruck, are

clinging to Your lute strings, and they are not

altogether lost.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

From: 'The Heart of God' selected and edited

by Herbert F. Vetter

“I slept & dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke & saw that life was service.

I acted, & behold, I saw that service was joy.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore

And joy is everywhere;

It is in the Earth's green covering of grass;

In the blue serenity of the Sky;

In the reckless exuberance of Spring;

In the severe abstinence of grey Winter;

In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame;

In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright;

In Living;

In the exercise of all our powers;

In the acquisition of Knowledge;

In fighting evils...

Joy is there

Everywhere.

~ Rabindranath Tagore