Analysis of Stray Birds 11- 20

Rabindranath Tagore 1861 (Kolkata) – 1941 (Kolkata)



11
SOME unseen fingers, like idle breeze,
are playing upon my heart the music of the ripples.

'WHAT language is thine, O sea?'
'The language of eternal question.'
'What language is thy answer, O sky?
'The language of eternal silence.'

LISTEN,
my heart,
to the whispers of the world
with which it makes love to you.

THE mystery of creation
is like the darkness of night--
it is great.

Delusions of knowledge are like
the fog of the morning.

DO not seat your love upon a precipice because it is high.
16

I SIT at my window this morning
where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment,
nods to me and goes.

THESE little thoughts are the rustle of leaves;
they have their whisper of
joy in my mind.

WHAT you are you do not see,
what you see is your shadow.

MY wishes are fools, they shout across thy songs, my Master.
Let me but listen.

I CANNOT choose the best.
The best chooses me.


Scheme AXX BCDX CXXX CXX XE DA EXX XXX BX XC XB
Poetic Form Tetractys  (30%)
Etheree  (30%)
Metre 1 101101101 11001110101010 1101111 010101010 110111011 010101010 10 11 1010101 1111111 01001010 1101011 111 01011011 011010 1111101010001111 1 111110110 1011010111010 11101 1101101011 111101 1011 1111111 111111 11011110111110 11110 110101 01101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 899
Words 181
Sentences 17
Stanzas 11
Stanza Lengths 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 62
Words per stanza (avg) 15
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 19, 2023

53 sec read
121

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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