Stray Bird 241-260 Rabindranath Tagore

241 Thou hast led me through my crowded travels of the day to my evening's loneliness. I wait for its meaning through the stillness of the night.

242 This life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same narrow ship. In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.

243 The stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.

244 My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

245 The bird-song is the echo of the morning light back from the earth.

246 "Are you too proud to kiss me?" the morning light asks the buttercup.

247 "How may I sing to thee and worship, O Sun?" asked the little flower.

"By the simple silence of thy purity," answered the sun.

248 Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal.

249 Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

250 Let not the sword-blade mock its handle for being blunt.

251 The night's silence, like a deep lamp, is burning with the light of its milky way.

252 Around the sunny island of Life swells day and night death's limitless song of the sea.

253 Is not this mountain like a flower, with its petals of hills, drinking the sunlight?

254 The real with its meaning read wrong and emphasis misplaced is the unreal.

255 Find your beauty, my heart, from the world's movement, like the boat that has the grace of the wind and the water.

256 The eyes are not proud of their sight but of their eyeglasses.

257 I live in this little world of mine and am afraid to make it the least less. Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom gladly to lose my all.

258 The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

259 My heart, with its lapping waves of song, longs to caress this green world of the sunny day.

260 Wayside grass, love the star, then your dreams will come out in flowers.