Stray Bird 281-300 Rabindranath Tagore

281 I have seen thee as the half-awakened child sees his mother in the dusk of the dawn and then smiles and sleeps again.

282 I shall die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.

283 While I was passing with the crowd in the road I saw thy smile from the balcony and I sang and forgot all noise.

284 Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

285 They light their own lamps and sing their own words in their temples. But the birds sing thy name in thine own morning light,--for thy name is joy.

286 Lead me in the centre of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.

287 Let them live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks. My heart longs for thy stars, my God.

288 Love's pain sang round my life like the unplumbed sea, and love's joy sang like birds in its flowering groves.

289 Put out the lamp when thou wishest. I shall know thy darkness and shall love it.

290 When I stand before thee at the day's end thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

291 Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, "I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man."

292 Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

293 Truth raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds broadcast.

294 The storm of the last night has crowned this morning with golden peace.

295 Truth seems to come with its final word; and the final word gives birth to its next.

296 Blessed is he whose fame does not outshine his truth.

297 Sweetness of thy name fills my heart when I forget mine--like thy morning sun when the mist is melted.

298 The silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous day of the child.

299 The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.

300 God waits for man to regain his childhood in wisdom.