THE GIFT, By Rabindranath Tagore

I want to give you something, my child, for we are drifting in the stream of the world.

Our lives will be carried apart, and our love forgotten.

But I am not so foolish as to hope that I could buy your heart with

my gifts.

Young is your life, your path long, and you drink the love we

bring you at one draught and turn and run away from us.

You have your play and your playmates. What harm is there if

you have no time or thought for us!

We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age to count the days

that are past, to cherish in our hearts what our hands have lost for

ever.

The river runs swift with a song, breaking through all barriers.

But the mountain stays and remembers, and follows her with his

love.

From “Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore” by Rabindranath Tagore. (Collier Books: $14., paperback; 469 pp.) Tagore, born in Calcutta in 1861, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Until his death in 1941, he was an active opponent of British colonialism. 1941 by Rabindranath Tagore. Reprinted by permission .