* * *

Rabindranath Tagore

* * *

Say of him what you please, but I know my child's failings.

 I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my

little child.

 How should you know how dear he can be when you try to weigh

his merits against his faults?

 When I must punish him he becomes all the more a part of my

being.

 When I cause his tears to come my heart weeps with him.

 I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may

chastise who loves. 

* * *

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was

hiding its last gold like a miser.

 The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the

widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.

 Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed

the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush of

the evening.

 His village home lay there at the end of the waste land,

beyond the sugar-cane field, hidden among the shadows of the banana

and the slender areca palm, the coconut and the dark green jack-

fruit trees.

 I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight,

and saw spread before me the darkened earth surrounding with her

arms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mother's

hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that

knows nothing of its value for the world.