Morning Prayer : Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
Into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
Has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

                                         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE

                                       Nobel Prize for literature 1913

ENNUI

Lately

Thoughts do not sprout,

This is a barren season,

The morning holds no promise,

And night thankfully

Brings oblivion,

While the day extends endlessly

In routine.

The heart has closed,

The mind still,

Not a whiff of air,

Something cold in the breast,

A grand emptiness everywhere.

Something has snapped somewhere,

It is low tide,

The moon of the mind

Has set,

But there is not even anguish,

Not even hurt, no emotion,

The leaves do not stir,

There is no storm,

Just an impotent silence here,

An emptiness,

But it is not tranquil,

It is the stuff of vacuums

Of nothingness

Of casting a net

Into a fish-less sea,

With a ringing in the ears,

A restlessness

Of ennui.