Tagore is a great lover of Nature. He does not worship Nature like Wordsworth, but uses Nature as a medium to see, recognize and reach God. All his feelings of love for God are expressed through the elements, particles and objects of Nature.
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| Nature in Gitanjali by R.N. Tagore |
In Gitanjali he treats Nature as a parcel of divinity, It is through Nature that he captures the greatness, glory, immensity and wonder the God is. The poet becomes a ‘frail vessel’, ‘little flute of reed’, ‘little flower’. His ‘adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea’. In song LXXX, he sings:
“I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn uselessly roaming in the sky. O my sun ever- glorious: Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour, making me one with thy light, and thus I count months and years separated from thee.”
Whenever the poet's heart is filled with a deep feeling of love for God, he begins to identify himself with Nature or is merged with it:
1. Today the summer has come at my window with its sights and murmurs; and the bees are flying their minstrelsy at the court of the following grove. ( II )
2. I sit on the grass and gaze upon the sky and dream of the sudden splendour of thy coming — all the lights ablaze, golden flags flying over thy car, and they at the roadside standing agape, when they see thee come down from thy seat to raise me from the dust, and set at thy side this ragged beggar girl a - tremble with shame and pride, like a creeper in a summer breeze. (XLI)
In order to meet God, Tagore is ready to ‘wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience’. And then:
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pours down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
Then the world will take wing in songs from ever one of my birds’ nests. And thy melodies will break its flowers in all my forest groves.
Even God's journey to the poet will be through Nature: but the poet himself does not know the part and the time—
By what dim shore of the ink - black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading thy course to come to me, my friend?
Whenever there is any stirring in the poet's spirit, there is some string in Nature too. For example:
The sky is overcast with clouds and the rain is ceaseless.......... A moment's flash of lightning drag down a deeper gloom on my sight, and my heart gropes for the part to where the music of the night calls me
Light, oh where is the light; Kindle it with the burning fire of desire; it thunders and the wind rushes screaming through the void. The night is black as a black stone. Let not the hours pass by in the dark. Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.
Nature is the main source of Tagore's imagery not only in Gitanjali but also in all of his poems. It occurs again and again. The rains, the streams, the rivers, the ocean, the shore, the boat belong to the cluster of water imagery. The birds, wings, the sky, the clouds, the storm to the imagery of the sky or of height to manifest God's loftiness and highness. But it is the imagery of dark and light which other elements also occur at intervals. At several occasions the sky, the earth, the horizon, the storm, darkness, heat, lightning are fused together. For example:
The rain has held back for days and days, my God, in my arid heart. The horizon is fiercely naked not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud, not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death, if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lighting startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord, call back this pervading silent heat, still and keen and cruel, burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from above like the tearful look of the mother on the say of the father's wrath. (XL)
Giving his offerings to God, Tagore can paint the whole landscape without ever loosing sight of the Almighty:
The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.
The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowned and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass............
They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far - away countries.............
The repose of the sun - embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. (XLVIII)
In gale and hail, in grass and meadow, in light and dark, in everything of Nature, Tagore sees God; He sees His power in every atom of Nature. The influence of the Geeta is apparent. His God is omnipresent. In song LX VII, he says: “Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well.”