This Independence Day, read some of the best thought-invoking poems by Rabindranath Tagore!

New Delhi: Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win Nobel Price in literature was born on 7th May 1861. The Bengali polymath – poet, writer, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter was instrumental in redesigning Bengali literature and music along with Indian art with contextual modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Along with the national anthem of India he wrote many beautiful pieces. Here are 3 best Independence Day poems by Rabindranath Tagore.

1)    Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the ehad is heald high
where knowledge is free
where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habits
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Inro ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

2)    Freedom

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future;
Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night's stillness,
mistrusting the star that speaks of truth's adventurous paths;
freedom from the anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds,
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.
Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet's world,
where movements are started through brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits,
where figures wait with patience and obedience for the
master of show,
to be stirred into a mimicry of life.

3)    Free Love

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world.
But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs,
and thou keepest me free.
Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone.
But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart,
thy love for me still waits for my love.