Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as <br />this dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are <br />immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form. <br /> The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your <br />limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in your voice, and <br />touched my heart with your face. You suddenly stopped in your walk, <br />in the shadow-side of the Forever, and I went on alone. <br /> Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it <br />runs; it beckons me on, I follow the unseen; but you stand there, <br />where you stopped behind that dust and those stars; and you are a <br />mere picture. <br /> No, it cannot be. Had the life-flood utterly stopped in you, <br />it would stop the river in its flow, and the foot-fall of dawn in <br />her cadence of colours. Had the glimmering dusk of your hair <br />vanished in the hopeless dark, the woodland shade of summer would <br />die with its dreams. <br /> Can it be true that I forgot you? We haste on without heed, <br />forgetting the flowers on the roadside hedge. Yet they breathe <br />unaware into our forgetfulness, filling it with music. You have <br />moved from my world, to take seat at the root of my life, and <br />therefore is this forgetting-remembrance lost in its own depth. <br /> You are no longer before my songs, but one with them. You came <br />to me with the first ray of dawn. I lost you with the last gold of <br />evening. Ever since I am always finding you through the dark. No, <br />you are no mere picture.<br /><br />Rabindranath Tagore<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lover-s-gifts-xlii-are-you-a-mere-picture/
