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India

Tagore’s “The New Year” (Poem of the Day)

contributors 01/01/2014

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(By Rabindranath Tagore)

The New Year

LIKE FRUIT, shaken free by an impatient wind

from the veils of its mother flower,

thou comest, New Year, whirling in a frantic dance

amid the stampede of the wind-lashed clouds

and infuriate showers,

while trampled by thy turbulence

are scattered away the faded and the frail

in an eddying agony of death.

Thou art no dreamer afloat on a languorous breeze,

lingering among the hesitant whisper and hum

of an uncertain season.

Thine is a majestic march, o terrible Stranger,

thundering forth an ominous incantation,

driving the days on to the perils of a pathless dark,

where thou carriest a dumb signal in thy banner,

a decree of destiny undeciphered.

_____________
h/t The Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore (d. 1941) was a Bengali poet, dramatist, novelist, social reformer and theorist of peace. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

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Related Video:

Rare footage of Tagore:

Filed Under: India, poetry

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