Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.
Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds, 82 (1916)
Source checked by an editor
When and why it was written
- When
- From Stray Birds, published in 1916.
- Why
- One of the short sayings in Tagore's collection on nature and the spirit.
What it means
Tagore asks for beauty at both ends: the full bloom of living and the quiet colour of letting go.
Autumn leaves are not a failure of the tree. They are part of its year.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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Stray Birds, 1916
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