Analysis of I

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



I wonder if I know him
In whose speech is my voice,
In whose movement is my being,
Whose skill is in my lines,
Whose melody is in my songs
In joy and sorrow.
I thought he was chained within me,
Contained by tears and laughter,
Work and play.
I thought he was my very self
Coming to an end with my death.
Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
In the sight and touch of my beloved?
This 'I' beyond self I found
On the shores of the shining sea.
Therefore I know
This 'I' is not imprisoned within my bounds.
Losing myself, I find him
Beyond the borders of time and space.
Through the Ages
I come to know his Shining Self
In the life of the seeker,
In the voice of the poet.
From the dark clouds pour the rains.
I sit and think:
Bearing so many forms, so many names,
I come down, crossing the threshold
Of countless births and deaths.
The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
Embracing past and present,
Dwells in Man.
Within Him I shall find myself -
The 'I' that reaches everywhere.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKALMGFNAOPJHQRSTUVJWXJY
Poetic Form
Metre 1101111 011111 01101110 111011 11001011 01010 11111011 0111010 101 11111101 10111111 11001111111 001011101 1101111 10110101 111 11110100111 101111 010101101 1010 11111101 0011010 0011010 1011101 1101 1011011101 1111001 110101 00101001001 0101010 101 0111111 0111010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 962
Words 196
Sentences 13
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 33
Lines Amount 33
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 760
Words per stanza (avg) 194
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 30, 2023

58 sec read
229

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore FRAS was an Indian polymath—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. more…

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