If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds, 6 (1916)
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When and why it was written
- When
- From Stray Birds, Tagore's 1916 collection of short poems, written in English.
- Why
- The poems were inspired in part by Japanese haiku, which Tagore encountered on his travels.
What it means
Grief for what has gone can hide what has arrived. Night is not only the loss of the sun; it has its own light.
Tagore does not forbid the tears. He asks us to look up through them.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Stray Birds, 1916
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