This is my prayer to thee, my lord - strike, strike at the root of penury
in my heart
Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows
Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service
Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before
insolent might.
Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.
And
give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love
Tagore a great poet, a great philosopher and a
great yogi of the 20th century, was unknown to the west until he received the
Nobel Prize for literature. His masterpiece and famous book Gitanjali - songs of offerings to God, won the Nobel Prize. The great scholars
of the west such as W.B Yeats read the Gitanjali and gave an introductory note
to these poems. Western and eastern great poet, philosopher acknowledged
Tagore's deep inner strength and praised him and accepted him as one of the
greatest man of the 20th century. Tagore's father, Debendranath, was a great
Maharishi who established a social spiritual organisation, Brahmsamaj, a community of the people who accept God as everything.
His father was a great yogi and writer of
several books. Tagore saw deep spirituality in his father and learnt from him
and, from his early childhood, he wrote poems as expressions of himself, which
were admired by the Indians and later on by the world. He established Shanti Niketan a place of peace where
east and west can unite at the bank of the holy Gangga River. Shanti Niketan was where Tagore
meditated on the bank of Gangga River and started his universal teaching and
his spiritual message was finally heard by the World and, during his time, Shanti NiketanAffandi visited Shanti Niketan and his
daughter Kartika Affandi stayed at Shanti Niketan. ‘Taman Siswa of Yogyakarta'
established by K. Aji Devantara was a prototype of Shanti Niketan of Tagore.
Tagore was not only a poet but also a great
philosopher, composer of songs, musician, painter and reconciler of east and
west. A great human being and a great spiritual person who surrendered himself
to the service of humanity and his real yogi type of face attracted millions of
people. He met the great people of that time like W.B Yeats and Albert Einstein
and they praised him. He loved human beings, birds, animals and the whole
beautiful creation of God. He was one of the great yogis of that time who
meditated for his own spiritual development and later on spread his universal
and spiritual, message of humanity to the world through his book Gitanjali. He was a great lover of
nature; he wrote a beautiful message in the Guest book near Balaton Lake in
Hungry.
When
I am no longer on this earth, my tree,
Let
the ever renewed Leaves of Thy Springs
Murmur
to the Wayfarers,
The
poet did love while he lived.
When
he went to the west and met Albert Einstein, Einstein asked Tagore what his
religion was. Tagore said My poems are my
religion his dialogues with Einstein are published in Religion of Man. Tagore lived a full life of 80 years and never
stopped writing until his death. On the morning of 30 July he dictated his last
poem in which occur the lines:
...........the
last reward he carries
To his treasure-house.......
The
unwasting right to peace
The same morning a surgical operation was
performed on him. His condition rapidly deteriorated after 3 August. He
breathed his last on Thursday, 7 August 1941, shortly after 12 noon. He was 80
years 3 months at the time of his death, which occurred in his ancestral home
in Calcutta, 6 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane, the house where he was born on Tuesday,
7 may 1861. On the evening of 7 august when his body was being consigned to the
flames in Calcutta the Community at santiniketan congregated in the prayer-hall
for a memorial service which concluded with the words of a song:
