THE HOME

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was

hiding its last gold like a miser.

The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the

widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.

Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed

the dark unseen, leaving the track of his song across the hush of

the evening.

His village home lay there at the end of the waste land, beyond

the sugar-cane field, hidden among the shadows of the banana and

the slender areca palm, the cocoa-nut and the dark green

jack-fruit trees.

I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and

saw spread before me the darkened earth surrounding with her arms

countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mothers' hearts

and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that

knows nothing of its value for the world.

- Tagore