Selected Poems

The poems of Rabindranath Tagore are among the most haunting and tender in Indian and world literature, expressing a profound and passionate human yearning. His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and mortals, the eternal and the transient, and the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging harmonies. Poems such as “Earth” and “In the Eyes of a Peacock” present a picture of natural processes unaffected by human concerns, while others, as in “Recovery—14,” convey the poet’s bewilderment about his place in the world. And exuberant works such as “New Rain” and “Grandfather’s Holiday” describe Tagore’s sheer joy at the glories of nature or simply in watching a grandchild play.

• William Radice's exquisite translations are accompanied by an introduction discussing Tagore's Bengali cultural background, his social, political, and religious beliefs, and the lyirc meters and verse forms he developed
• Contains a new preface, chronology of Tagore's life and works, and updated suggestions for further reading

Rabindranath Tagore (1861—1941), one of India's greatest and most prolific writers of the twentieth century, was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.
William Radice is a poet, scholar, and translator of Bengali, who has written or edited nearly thirty books. He has translated Tagore's short stories and his novel The Home and the World for Penguin Classics.