Wednesday 1 October 2014

'Unending Love' ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I love most of the poems by Rabindranath Tagore. I absolutely , love this one (translated from the original Bengali version by William Radice )


Unending Love

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, its age-old pain,
Its 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.


Reminds us of who? ;)

3 comments:

  1. The very first line reminded me of Krishna :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know..This is my favorite of all the poems in the world I think.

    I recently discovered the beauty of Tagore's poems , and Bengali songs :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. In my humble opinion, this is the most beautiful description of pure human love of all time. It is up there with Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116", Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee" and 1Corinthians, chapter 13 of the Holy Bible. This love transcends the every day parameters of love and catapults it to a meaning of its own. I have known a love such as this in mind, body and spirit. Through no inherent goodness or moral action, or beautiful thought I was afforded this. Therefore, I can attest to the benevolence of a sometimes and often cold universe...I attest to its Unending Love.

    ReplyDelete