"The Earth" by Rabindranath Tagore

Take me,
O Earth, again to that thy wholeness where
Life sprouts and buds and blossoms every day
In a hundred thousand ways, where songs are sung
To a hundred million tunes, and dances throb
To beats of innumerable symphonies...

Will not my joy of soul add just a shade
Of greenness to thy lovely woods? a spark
Of brightness to thy morning rays?...Will not
The forest, in a hundred years from now,
Carry my heart-throb in the tender folds
Of its green foliage?...

And will not the men
And women who will live in far-off times
Find something of me in them? Shall not I
Appear upon their faces as the light
Of smile? as youthful freshness in their limbs?
As sudden gladness in their sweet spring days?
As the soft glow of love in warm young hearts?...

I have not had enough. There yet remains
A mystery unsolved, a wonder still
Unguessed. I am, Earth-Mother, in thy arms
A child that looks astonished at thy face.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders."

—Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother

...Could you and I whene'er the light appears
Cry at the wonder "I am that," as did the Vedic seers?

~A.E.


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Three mystic poets: A study of W. B. Yeats, A. E., and Rabindranath Tagore

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

- St. Augustine

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
~ Albert Einstein