When I bring to you coloured toys, my child, I understand why
there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why
flowers are painted in tints–when I give coloured toys to you,
my child.
When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in
leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of
the listening earth–when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there
is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly
filled with sweet juice–when I bring sweet things to your greedy
hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely
understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light,
and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings
to my body–when I kiss you to make you smile.
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast
given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the
distant near and made a brother of the stranger.
I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter;
I forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there
also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever
thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my
endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the
unfamiliar.
When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is
shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of
the touch of the one in the play of many.
From: GITANJALI – ‘Song Offerings’
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