On Silence

Passages from "Stray Birds" by Rabindranath Tagore

(12)
"WHAT language is thine, O sea?"
"The language of eternal question."
"What language is thy answer, O sky?
"The language of eternal silence."

(37)
I CANNOT tell why this heart languishes in silence.
It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

(42)
YOU smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

(43)
THE fish in the water is silent, the animal on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing,
But Man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

(110)
MAN goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

(118)
DREAM is a wife who must talk.
Sleep is a husband who silently suffers.

(147)
THE dust of the dead words clings to thee.
Wash thy soul with silence.

(155)
SILENCE will carry your voice like the nest that holds the sleeping birds

(163)
"THE learned say that your lights will one day be no more." said the firefly to the stars.
The stars made no answer.

(176)
THE water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.

(182)
I AM like the road in the night listening to the footfalls of its memories in silence.

(208)
LET my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled in its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.

(239)
THE dim silence of my mind seems filled with crickets' chirp--the grey twilight of sound.

(247)
"HOW may I sing to thee and worship, O Sun?" asked the little flower.
"By the simple silence of thy purity," answered the sun.

(251)
THE night's silence, like a deep lamp, is burning with the light of its milky way.

(273)
LET my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

(298)
THE silent night has the beauty of the mother and the clamorous day of the child.

(305)
GOD's silence ripens man's thoughts into speech.