May Poet - Rabindranath Tagore
The Journey
Rabindranath Tagore was born May 7, 1861, in Calcutta, now known as Kolkata.
When Tagore translated his Gitanjali into English, he numbered and rendered the poems as prose pieces. They are, nevertheless, poetry of the highest order. Number 48 in Gitanjali has been turned into “The Journey” in anthologies and separated into eight stanzas.
The theme of the poem focuses on the spiritual journey for finding the Divine Beloved.
First Stanza: “The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs”
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the beautiful morning landscape that engulfed him and his fellow travelers as they set out on their journey. The first line is an exquisite metaphor. The early “silence” becomes a sea that breaks into “ripples of bird songs.” While the birds were singing, the flowers by the pathway were “all merry.”
The sky spreads a golden hue that is “scattered through the rift of the clouds.” Then he remarks that he and his fellows were making haste to travel and did not pay much attention to the beauty that greeted them.
Second Stanza: “We sang no glad songs nor played”
The speaker then reports that he and the other travelers were very serious about their travel, for “[w]e sang no glad songs nor played.” They did not go “to the village for barter,” nor did they ever speak or smile. They did not linger anywhere; they were in such a great hurry, so they “quickened [their] pace more and more as the time sped by.”
Third Stanza: “The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade”
By noon, the speaker notes the position of the sun and that doves were “coo[ing] in the shade.” He observes that a shepherd boy is resting under a tree. With the sun so hot and the doves and shepherd boy enjoying a respite from action, the speaker decides to halt his trek, so he “laid [him]self down by the water / and stretched [his] tired limbs on the grass.”
Fourth Stanza: “My companions laughed at me in scorn”
His traveling mates ridicule him for wanting to rest, and they continue on their journey: “they held their heads high and hurried on; / they never looked back nor rested; / they vanished in the distant blue haze.” The speaker remains to enjoy his leisure while the others keep their busy pace.
Fifth Stanza: “They crossed many meadows and hills”
The speaker then reports that his companions, not being lazy as he was, continued over “meadows and hills.” They traveled “through strange, far-away countries.” He offers them a tribute for their adventurous spirit; then he confides that he felt somewhat guilty for hanging back and not going with them, but he just could not motivate himself to continue on that journey.
Sixth Stanza: “I gave myself up for lost”
The speaker then divulges his ambiguous feelings: on the one hand he feels “lost,” not with the crowd; but on the other hand, his is a “glad humiliation,” and he seems to stand “in the shadow of a dim delight.”
Seventh Stanza: “The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom”
As he continues to lounge, he notices that sunset is “spread[ing] over his heart,” revealing again his ambiguous emotions. The gloom is “sun-embroidered,” similar to the expression, “every cloud has a silver lining.” He admits that he can no long remember why he set out on this trip in the first place, so he just lets himself go, not fighting his true inclinations any longer. He allows his mind and heart to go musing through “the maze of shadows and songs.”
Eighth Stanza: “At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes”
Finally, he wakes up from his ambiguous stupor and realizes that he has found what he was looking for. He had feared that “the path was long and wearisome / and the struggle to reach thee was hard,” but all he had to do was follow his inner self to the door of the Divine Beloved.
Rabindranath Tagore
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