So Appealing!!!!. Review on Stray Birds - Rabindranath Tagore

So Appealing!!!!

Stray Birds - The very title (after reading) becomes so solemn – it actually signifies stray thoughts/feelings which fly like birds (and come back too). If ever we were to look into our hearts we were to find the same feelings which Tagore has carved into words so musical. I downloaded this e-book (free) from https://gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/stryb10h.htm. They are very simple and short verses (326 in number – can be completed in one sitting). Tagore’s name is synonymous with Nature and Beauty and with what ease he writes his songs! These words make me feel God – I worship them. All the more here, his words have all abstract qualities, namely Love, Painful joy, Peace, Joy, Lamentations and Sensuousness and all this is Beautiful isn’t it?

I quote some of the verses here which appealed to me (All of them did –I do not have space here to present all of them – Do Read).

''IN the moon thou sendest thy love letters to me,'' said the night to the sun.

''I leave my answers in tears upon the grass''.

What passion in these lines! The Night and the Sun are personified or one can also say pathetic fallacy is employed (pathetic fallacy –Nature endowed with human qualities). The night leaves her answers in tears (dewdrops on the grass) because, when her beloved the Sun comes –she (Night) has to depart.

THE raindrops kissed the earth and whispered,--''We are thy homesick children, mother, come back to thee from the heaven.''

In these lines Tagore seems to be saying even the eternal pleasures of Heaven cannot satisfy Children (raindrops) – only Mother’s arms (earth) can. How great a truth is clothed in so simple words – Only Tagore can.

YOU smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

Simply being there is enough –with a smile unquestioned and unanswered – Oh that is heaven – is it not so (that too if it is one of our dear ones).

“ONE sad voice has its nest among the ruins of the years.

It sings to me in the night,--''I loved you.''

It is because of this feeling amidst all our sadness that we dare to live.

MY thoughts shimmer with these shimmering leaves and my heart sings with the touch of this sunlight; my life is glad to be floating with all things into the blue of space, into the dark of time.“

Tagore here has brought the feeling of oneness – floating in the space feeling one with all- Who will not sing in such a situation.

THE world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.

This joy that springs from pain will never go unsung – It has to be released.

THE prelude of the night is commenced in the music of the sunset, in its solemn hymn to the ineffable dark.

I hear the symphony- do you?

I SIT at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.

Even the mundane and the usual looks beautiful in his words

Dear Friends – Do read all and enjoy these lines if possible in solitude – It is So Appealing!