The Crescent Moon: A wonderful collection of lyrical poetry and poetry in prose

By Rabindranath Tagore

is a wonderful collection of lyrical poetry and poetry in prose by India's most well-known poet, Rabindranath Tagore, whose book "Gitanjali" shot him to fame in the west. Most of the poems focus on the love in a mother-child relationship and its development over the years as the child grows up, with a lot of nature imagery sprinkled in the verses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dnl Media
• Release date: Jun 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9788418754975

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was an Indian poet, composer, philosopher, and painter from Bengal. Born to a prominent Brahmo Samaj family, Tagore was raised mostly by servants following his mother’s untimely death. His father, a leading philosopher and reformer, hosted countless artists and intellectuals at the family mansion in Calcutta, introducing his children to poets, philosophers, and musicians from a young age. Tagore avoided conventional education, instead reading voraciously and studying astronomy, science, Sanskrit, and classical Indian poetry. As a teenager, he began publishing poems and short stories in Bengali and Maithili. Following his father’s wish for him to become a barrister, Tagore read law for a brief period at University College London, where he soon turned to studying the works of Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. In 1883, Tagore returned to India to marry and manage his ancestral estates. During this time, Tagore published his Manasi (1890) poems and met the folk poet Gagan Harkara, with whom he would work to compose popular songs. In 1901, having written countless poems, plays, and short stories, Tagore founded an ashram, but his work as a spiritual leader was tragically disrupted by the deaths of his wife and two of their children, followed by his father’s death in 1905. In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first lyricist and non-European to be awarded the distinction. Over the next several decades, Tagore wrote his influential novel The Home and the World (1916), toured dozens of countries, and advocated on behalf of Dalits and other oppressed peoples.

Book preview

THE CRESCENT MOON

BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

1913

Index

The Home

The Source

Baby's Way

The Unheeded Pageant

Sleep-Stealer

The Beginning

Baby's World

When And Why

Defamation

The Judge

Playthings

The Astronomer

Clouds And Waves

The Champa Flower

Fairyland

The Land Of The Exile

The Rainy Day

Paper Boats

The Sailor

The Further Bank

The Flower-School

The Merchant

Sympathy

Vocation

Superior

The Little Big Man

Twelve O'clock

Authorship

The Wicked Postman

The Hero

The End

The Recall

The First Jasmines

The Banyan Tree

Benediction

The Gift

My Song

The Child-Angel

The Last Bargain

The Home

The Home--from a drawing by Nandalall Bose

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 cocoa-nut 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, mothers' hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing of its value for the world.

On The Seashore

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing