SUPPOSING I became a champa flower, just for fun, and grew on a branch high up that tree, and shook in the wind with laughter and danced upon the newly budded leaves, would you know me, mother?
You would call, 'Baby, where are you?' and I should laugh to myself and keep quite quiet.
I should slyly open my petals and watch you at your work.
When after your bath, with wet hair spread on your shoulders, you walked through the shadow of the champa tree to the little court where you say your prayers, you would notice the scent of the flower, but not know that it came from me.
When after the midday meal you sat at the window reading Ramayana, and the tree's shadow fell over your hair and your lap, I should fling my wee little shadow on to the page of your book, just where you were reading.
But would you guess that it was the tiny shadow of your little child?
When in the evening you went to the cowshed with the lighted lamp in your hand, I should suddenly drop on to the earth again and be your own baby once more, and beg you to tell me a story.
'Where have you been, you naughty child? '
'I won't tell you, mother. ' That's what you and I would say then.

তুমি মোরে অর্পিয়াছ যত অধিকার
ক্ষুণ্ন না করিয়া কভু কণামাত্র তার
সম্পূর্ণ সঁপিয়া দিব তোমার চরণে
অকুণ্ঠিত রাখি তারে বিপদে মরণে।
জীবন সার্থক হবে তবে।
      চিরদিন
জ্ঞান যেন থাকে মুক্ত শৃঙ্খলাবিহীন।
ভক্তি যেন ভয়ে নাহি হয় পদানত
পৃথিবীর কারো কাছে। শুভচেষ্টা যত
কোনো বাধা নাহি মানে কোনো শক্তি হতে
আত্মা যেন দিবারাত্রি অবারিত স্রোতে
সকল উদ্যম লয়ে ধায় তোমা-পানে
সর্ব বন্ধ টুটি। সদা লেখা থাকে প্রাণে
"তুমি যা দিয়েছ মোরে অধিকারভার
তাহা কেড়ে নিতে দিলে অমান্য তোমার।'

'TO THE pilgrimage' calls the young,
'to love, to power, to knowledge, to wealth overflowing,'
'We shall conquer the world and the world beyond this,'
they all cry exultant in a thundering cataract of voices,
The meaning is not the same to them all, but only the impulse,
the moving confluence of wills that recks not death and disaster.
No longer they ask for their way,
no more doubts are there to burden their minds or weariness to clog their feet.
The spirit of the Leader is within them and ever beyond them
the Leader who has crossed death and all limits.
They travel over the fields where the seeds are sown,
by the granary where the harvest is gathered,
and across the barren soil where famine dwells
and skeletons cry for the return of their flesh.
They pass through populous cities humming with life,
through dumb desolation bugging its ruined past,
and hovels for the unclad and unclean,
a mockery of home for the homeless.
They travel through long hours of the summer day,
and as the light wanes in the evening they ask the man who reads the sky:
'Brother, is yonder the tower of our final hope and peace?'
The wise man shakes his head and says:
It is the last vanishing cloud of the sunset.'
'Friends,' exhorts the young, 'do not stop.
Through the night's blindness we must struggle into the Kingdom of living light.'
They go on in the dark.
The road seems to know its own meaning
and dust underfoot dumbly speaks of direction.
The starscelestial wayfarerssing in silent chorus:
'Move on, comrades!'
In the air floats the voice of the Leader:
'The goal is nigh.'