Rabindranath Tagore

The Crescent Moon Rabindranath Tagore

I PACED alone on the road across the field while the sunset was hiding its last gold like a miser. The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the widowed land, whose harvesthad been reaped, lay silent. Suddenly a boy's shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving the trackof his song across the hush of the evening. His village home lay there at the end of the waste land, beyond the sugar-cane field, hiddenamong the shadows of the banana and the slender areca palm, the cocoa-nut and the dark greenjack-fruit trees. I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before me thedarkened earth surrounding with her arms countless homes furnished with cradles and beds, mothers' hearts and evening lamps, and young lives glad with a gladness that knows nothing ofits value for the world