Excerpts from Fireflies : Tagore

My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.

Your careless gifts of a moment,
like the meteors of an autumn night,
catch fire in the depth of my being.

The faith waiting in the heart of a seed
promises a miracle of life
which it cannot prove at once.

These paper boats of mine are meant to dance
on the ripples of hours,
and not to reach any destination.

You leave your memory as a flame
to my lonely lamp of separation.

Your flitting love lightly brushed with its wings
my sun-flower
and never asked if it was ready to surrender its honey.

Between the shores of Me and Thee
there is the loud ocean, my own surging self,
which I long to cross.

Before the end of my journey
may I reach within myself
the one which is the all,
leaving the outer shell
to float away with the drifting multitude
upon the current of chance and change.