Selected Poems

Selected Poems
ISBN: 9780140449884
Publication Date: 4 May 2005

The poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and in world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging harmonies. Poems such as Earth' and In the Eyes of a Peacock' present a picture of natural processes unaffected by human concerns, while others, as in Recovery 14', convey the poet's bewilderment about his place in the world. And exuberant works such as New Rain' and Grandfather's Holiday' describe Tagore's sheer joy at the glories of nature or simply in watching a grandchild play.

About The Author Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861, the son of Maharshi Debendra Nath Tagore. The Tagores were a famous family of religious and social reformers, musicians and artists, and Rabindranath was brought up in a literary atmosphere. He was educated privately and at the age of twenty-four went to the country to take charge of his father's estates, where he wrote many of his works. In 1877 he paid a short visit to England. Tagore began writing Bengali lyrics at a very early age and in 1890 published his first volume of poetry, Manasi. From 1891 to 1895 he was the chief contributor to Sadhana, a prominent Bengali literary journal. To this period belongs his early group of drama, Chitrangada, Sacrifice, King and Queen and Malini, and two collections of lyrics, Chitra, which contains some of his finest work, and Sonar Tari. His most celebrated collection of lyrics, Gitanjali, was published in 1909, and in the following year The King of the Dark Chamber, a profoundly moving drama. In 1912 he again visited England, taking with him an English translatio...