Sunday, August 15, 2010

Poem of the day: on India's Independence Day

I might as well make a thematic third for today, after this post and this

The following poem by Rabindranath Tagore was a required reading back in high school.  I would expect that to be the same even now.  (Note: this poem was not written by Tagore to commemorate the independence.  He died in 1941--six years before the British handed over the keys.)

WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

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