LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,117)
  • Text Authors (19,521)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)
Translation by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

When the creation was new
Language: English  after the Bangla (Bengali) 
Our translations:  GER
When the creation was new 
and all the stars shone in their first splendour, 
the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang 
'Oh, the picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'

But one cried of a sudden - 
'It seems that somewhere there is a break in the chain of light 
and one of the stars has been lost.'

The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped, 
and they cried in dismay - 
'Yes, that lost star was the best, 
she was the glory of all heavens!'

From that day the search is unceasing for her, 
and the cry goes on from one to the other 
that in her the world has lost its one joy!

Only in the deepest silence of night 
the stars smile and whisper among themselves -
 'Vain is this seeking! 
unbroken perfection is over all!'

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), no title, appears in Gitanjali, no. 78, first published 1912 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Based on:

  • a text in Bangla (Bengali) by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), appears in গীতাঞ্জলি (Gitanjali), no. 78 [text unavailable]
    • Go to the text page.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

    [ None yet in the database ]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , copyright © 2014, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2010-11-03
Line count: 18
Word count: 140

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris