Tradition and verse — not medical advice

The First Jasmines

Rabindranath Tagore, The Crescent Moon (1913, Macmillan and Company). Public domain.

Shown in author's own English -- not a translation we made.

Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!

I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands with these jasmines, these white jasmines.

I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;

Many a glad day has come in my life, and I have laughed with merrymakers on festival nights.

Yet my heart is sweet with the memory of the first fresh jasmines that filled my hands when I was a child.

In plain words (ours, not the poet's): a grown-up remembers that, of all their happy memories, holding a handful of jasmine flowers as a child stays the sweetest.

Why public domain: Tagore wrote The Crescent Moon in English himself, first published London 1913. US: pre-1929 publication, public domain in the US. Tagore died 1941; public domain in India (life + 60 years) since 2002.

Read the original in full

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