5.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote:The birds gave You songs in return.
You gave me only a voice,
But You asked for more,
And I sing."
He offered the world more than two thousand songs. He once said that when he was capable of singing, his own compositions were very few in number. But when he had become a prolific composer, his voice failed him and he was unable to sing most of his own songs.
He made a prophetic utterance about his own songs: “With the march of time, everything changes. But the Bengalees will sing my songs epoch after epoch. They will sing my songs in the hour of their sorrow, grief, joy and delight. They will have no alternative.”
In the song I shall now sing, Tagore compares the Pole-Star, fixed and steady in the dark night, with the light of the mind and heart which illumines the unlit existence of human life:
Nivid ghana andhare jwalichhe Dhruva tara...
In the tenebrous gloom shines the Pole-Star;
O my mind, in the immense expanse of night,
Lose not your Way.
Dead with depression and despair,
O my heart, cease not your singing.
Breaking asunder the prison of delusion,
Fulfil your life...
