Gitanjali or The 'Song offerings' in English translation is a Volume of 103 poems selected by Tagore from his several Bengali books of poetry. This is one of my favourite poems from Gitanjali. Read on....
"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 the 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 everwidening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake"
This Soul stirring, life-affirming poerty comes from a dreamig spire. There is little wonder then, that W.B. Yeats wrote in the introduction that "the poems have stirred my blood as nothing for years"
Wonder what he would have said about India today!
Shrenik
