Salutation from Rabindranath Tagore

 A Salute of Rabindranath Tagore to Sri Aurobindo - 

Following his meeting with Sri Aurobindo in May 1928, Rabindranath Tagore wrote an essay (excerpts from that rich essay in images attached) and a poem in Salutation :

SALUTATION

RABINDRANATH, O Aurobindo, bows to thee !

O friend, my country’s friend, O voice incarnate, free,

Of India’s soul ! No soft renown doth crown thy lot,

Nor pelf or careless comfort is for thee; thou’st sought

No petty bounty, petty dole; the beggar’s bowl

Thou ne’er hast held aloft. In watchfulness thy soul

Hast thou e’er held for bondless full perfection’s birth

For which, all night and day, the god in man on earth

Doth strive and strain austerely; which in solemn voice

The poet sings in thund’rous poems ; for which rejoice

Stout hearts to march on perilous paths; before whose flame

Refulgent, ease bows down its head in humbled shame

And death forgetteth fear;—that gift supreme

To thee from Heaven’s own hand, that full-orb’d fadeless dream

That’s thine, thou’st asked for as thy country’s own desire

In quenchless hope, in words with truth’s white flame afire,

In infinite faith, hath God in heaven heard at last

This prayer of thine? And so, sounds there, in blast on blast,

His victory-trumpet ? And puts he, with love austere,

In thy right hand, today, the fateful lamp and drear

Of sorrow, whose light doth pierce the country’s agelong gloom,

And in the infinite skies doth steadfast shine and loom,

As doth the Northern star ? O Victory and Hail!?

Where is the coward who will shed tears today, or wail

Or quake in fear ? And who’ll belittle truth to seek

His own small safety ? Where’s the spineless creature weak

Who will not in thy pain his strength and courage find ?

O wipe away those tears, O thou of craven mind !

The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God :

Hath come—-where is the king -who can with chain or rod

Chastise him ? Chains that were to bind salute his feet.

And prisons greet him as their guest with welcome sweet,

The pall of gloom that wraps the sun in noontide skies

In dim eclipse, within a moment slips and flies

As doth a shadow. Punishment ? It ever falls

On him who is no man, and every day hath feared,

Abashed, to gaze on truth’s face with a free man’s eye

And call a wrong a wrong; on him who doth deny

His manhood shamelessly before his own compeers,

And e’er disowns his God-given rights, impelled by fears

And greeds; who on his degradation prides himself,

Who traffics in his country’s shame; whose bread, whose pelf

Are his own mother’s gore; that coward sits and quails

In jail without reprieve, outside all human jails.

When I behold thy face, ‘mid bondage, pain and wrong

And black indignities, I hear the soul’s great song

Of rapture unconfined, the chant the pilgrim sings

In which exultant hope’s immortal splendour rings,

Solemn voice and calm, and heart-consoling, grand

Of imperturbable death, the spirit of Bharat-land,

O poet, hath placed upon thy face her eyes a fire

With love, and struck vast chords upon her vibrant lyre,—

Wherein there is no note of sorrow, shame or fear,

Or penury or want. And so today I hear

The ocean’s restless roar borne by the stormy wind,

Th’ impetuous fountain’s dance riotous, swift and blind

Bursting its rocky cage,—the voice of thunder deep

Awakening, like a clarion call, the clouds asleep

Amid this song triumphant, vast, that encircles me,

Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee !

And then to Him I bow Who in His sport doth make

New worlds in fiery dissolution’s awful wake,

From death awakes new life; in danger’s bosom rears.

Prosperity; and sends his devotee in tears,

‘Mid desolation’s thorns, amid his foes to fight

Alone and empty-handed in the gloom of night;

In divers tongues, in divers ages speaketh ever

In every mighty deed, in every great eendeavour

And true experience: “Sorrow’s naught, howe’er drear

And pain is naught, and harm is naught, and naught all fear;

The king’s a shadow, – punishment is but a breath;

Where is the tyranny of wrong, and where is death ?

0 fool, O coward, raise thy head that’s bowed in fear,

I am, thou art, and everlasting truth is here.”

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Published in Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual 1944

Translated from original Bengali by Kshitishchandra Sen.