X
Tell me if this is all true, my lover?
tell me if it is true.
When the eyes of me flash their lightning on you,
dark clouds in your breast make stormy answer;
Is it then true
that the dew drops fall from the night when I am seen,
and the morning light is glad when it wraps my body?
Is it true, is it true, that your love
travelled alone through ages and worlds in search of me?
that when you found me at last, your age-long desire
found utter peace in my gentle speech and my eyes and lips and flowing hair?
Is it then true
that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little brow of mine?
Tell me, my lover, if all this is true!
Source: Poetry (June 1913).
MORE FROM THIS ISSUE
This poem originally appeared in the June 1913 issue of Poetry magazine
A native of Calcutta, India, who wrote in Bengali and often translated his own work into English, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 — the first Asian to receive the honor. He wrote poetry, fiction, drama, essays, and songs; promoted reforms in education, aesthetics and religion; and in his late sixties he even turned to the visual arts, producing 2,500 paintings and drawings before his death.
Continue reading this biography
Poems by Rabindranath Tagore