The composer writes: Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali: Song Offerings are the poet’s own English-language translations of his Bengali-language poems. While Tagore’s translations are far from literal, they present to the Western world a window into the tradition of Hindu devotional poetry. (Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature for the collection.)

The Lotus could be described as a love poem, richly infused with images from nature. But as with many of the poems in Gitanjali: Song Offerings, the “love” can be interpreted as either worldly or spiritual.

TEXT

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying,
and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my
dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to
me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this
perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.