What do you think?
Rate this book
Yüreklere Yakılan Ezgi
Dostum;
kalbinin sırrını kendine saklama,
Anlat bana!..
Usulca ve bana yalnızca.
Nazlı nazlı gülümserken
fısıldayıver kulağıma usulca.
İnan ki
kulaklarım değil;
yüreğim duyacaktır bu sesi.
Bak gece ıssız,
evse sessiz.
Ve kuş yuvalarında
yalnızca uykular kanat çırpıyor.
Anlat!..
Kararsız gözyaşlarınla;
ürkek gülümsemelerinle.
Anlat!..
Tatlı utancınla;
pas tutan acılarınla;
Anlat bana!..
Kalbinin sırrını
bana anlat.
Anlat.
kalbinin sırrını kendine saklama,
Anlat bana!..
Usulca ve bana yalnızca.
Nazlı nazlı gülümserken
fısıldayıver kulağıma usulca.
İnan ki
kulaklarım değil;
yüreğim duyacaktır bu sesi.
Bak gece ıssız,
evse sessiz.
Ve kuş yuvalarında
yalnızca uykular kanat çırpıyor.
Anlat!..
Kararsız gözyaşlarınla;
ürkek gülümsemelerinle.
Anlat!..
Tatlı utancınla;
pas tutan acılarınla;
Anlat bana!..
Kalbinin sırrını
bana anlat.
Anlat.
160 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1997
36 people are currently reading
191 people want to read
About the author
Rabindranath Tagore
2,584 books4,262 followersAwarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.
The complete works of Rabindranath Tagore (রবীন্দ্র রচনাবলী) in the original Bengali are now available at these third-party websites:
http://www.tagoreweb.in/
http://www.rabindra-rachanabali.nltr....
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 27, 2022
DNF
Some of these prayers are extremely beautiful:
...Let Your love, like stars, shine in the
darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening. ...
But mostly, this collection bores me silly. Tagore was awarded the Nobel for his writings in 1913, and I am not diminishing the importance of this accomplishment. But I can't stay awake while reading this! It's the style -- so passive.
Some of these prayers are extremely beautiful:
...Let Your love, like stars, shine in the
darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening. ...
But mostly, this collection bores me silly. Tagore was awarded the Nobel for his writings in 1913, and I am not diminishing the importance of this accomplishment. But I can't stay awake while reading this! It's the style -- so passive.
June 29, 2012
It's Tagore - what's not to love? Clearly, one of the most overlooked poets/artists in western culture. He is to India who Dante is to Italy.
April 9, 2018
Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers.
I rediscovered Rabindranath Tagore, and I love his poems. This was a short collection of his poetry. I loved how religious they are - hopeful? Confident? in this existence of his God.
Notable ones were:
- Trees (just one line, reproduced above)
- My Greetings (My Guide, I am a wayfarer on an endless road, my greetings of a wanderer to You.)
- Hold My Hand (I love the repetition of "Hold My Hand", though I felt it could be emphasised more)
- This is My Prayer: Give me the supreme confidence of love, this is my prayer - the confidence that belongs to life in death, to victory in defeat, to the power hidden in the frailest beauty, to that dignity in pain which accepts hurt but disdains to return it.
- Time to Sit Quietly
- The Rebel: Rebelliously, I put out the light in my house, and Your sky surprised me with its stars.
- Not Altogether Lost (like "Hold My Hand", I liked the repetition).
- The Solitary Wayfarer: You are the solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh, my only Friend, my best Beloved, the gates are open in my house. Do not pass by like a dream.
- The Grasp of Your Hand
- The Fullness of Peace
- The Stream of Life: I feel my limbs made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
- Tears of the Earth: We rejoice, O God, that the tears of the earth keep her smiles in bloom.
- Let My Country Awake: Into that haven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Worship: From the words of the poet, people take what meanings please them; yet their last meaning points to You.
November 9, 2019
I am reluctant to give any book a 5-star rating. How could I do otherwise with Tagore's The Heart of God, seeing the universality and beauty of this collection of prayers? In these prayers, the Sacred is not a prosaic deity distant from us, foreign to us, but the lyrical beauty moving among us, as intimate with us as we are to ourselves.
January 16, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them
Reading this book felt less like reading a book and more like overhearing a mind kneeling in public, unafraid of being seen in its vulnerability. These are not prayers in the narrow, doctrinal sense; they are conversations stretched toward the infinite, spoken in a voice that refuses both piety and despair. What moved me most, returning to them after time, was Tagore’s insistence on intimacy with the divine—God here is not distant, punitive, or abstract, but restless, breathing, and implicated in human joy and suffering alike. There is a quiet audacity in how Tagore speaks to God, sometimes pleading, sometimes questioning, sometimes simply offering silence shaped into language. The simplicity of the prose is deceptive; beneath it runs a profound metaphysical confidence that faith need not erase doubt to remain sincere. I found myself slowing down, not out of reverence but because the rhythms demand it—each line feels calibrated to still the reader, to pull attention inward rather than upward. Unlike many devotional texts, this collection does not promise comfort as a reward; instead, it suggests that surrender is an ongoing practice, a way of learning how to be porous to the world without being destroyed by it. Reading this now, in an age that often mistakes noise for conviction, Tagore’s prayers feel radical in their gentleness, insisting that spiritual strength lies not in certainty but in openness. The book doesn’t instruct so much as it invites, asking the reader to sit with longing, humility, and wonder without rushing to closure. I didn’t come away with answers, but with a recalibrated sense of attention—a reminder that prayer, at its best, is not a performance of belief but an act of listening, where language becomes a vessel for trust rather than control.
Most recommended.
Reading this book felt less like reading a book and more like overhearing a mind kneeling in public, unafraid of being seen in its vulnerability. These are not prayers in the narrow, doctrinal sense; they are conversations stretched toward the infinite, spoken in a voice that refuses both piety and despair. What moved me most, returning to them after time, was Tagore’s insistence on intimacy with the divine—God here is not distant, punitive, or abstract, but restless, breathing, and implicated in human joy and suffering alike. There is a quiet audacity in how Tagore speaks to God, sometimes pleading, sometimes questioning, sometimes simply offering silence shaped into language. The simplicity of the prose is deceptive; beneath it runs a profound metaphysical confidence that faith need not erase doubt to remain sincere. I found myself slowing down, not out of reverence but because the rhythms demand it—each line feels calibrated to still the reader, to pull attention inward rather than upward. Unlike many devotional texts, this collection does not promise comfort as a reward; instead, it suggests that surrender is an ongoing practice, a way of learning how to be porous to the world without being destroyed by it. Reading this now, in an age that often mistakes noise for conviction, Tagore’s prayers feel radical in their gentleness, insisting that spiritual strength lies not in certainty but in openness. The book doesn’t instruct so much as it invites, asking the reader to sit with longing, humility, and wonder without rushing to closure. I didn’t come away with answers, but with a recalibrated sense of attention—a reminder that prayer, at its best, is not a performance of belief but an act of listening, where language becomes a vessel for trust rather than control.
Most recommended.
July 15, 2014
Gorgeous, but I seem to have only scratched the surface...I need more.
June 24, 2016
If you think you can't appreciate the prayers of someone who practices a different faith than you do, think again. Tagore has a humility and insight that touches the heart.
March 2, 2018
This immensely valuable set of prayers have their own unique intimate trope. They lend real insight into the authors spirit and are strong evidence for why he deservedly was awarded the Nobel.
January 7, 2024
Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of a hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of a hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.
January 31, 2025
Fantastic. Spirituality at its finest. Tagore has discovered a treasure that all of us seek our whole lives - a relationship with the Divine; the God of the Universe. Beautifully woven with images of nature and humanity, this collection of poems will infuse wisdom and truth into your soul. Absolutely stunning.
December 27, 2019
Simply wonderful
November 25, 2021
A nice collection. Didn’t quite resonate with me but there’s some great stuff in here.
Read
April 17, 2011I really wanted this book because I love the often-quoted poem by Tagore that begins, "It is for the union of you and me that there is light in the sky.." However, I hated the poems in this book. The language was not flowing, every single one was about "You," (God), and I just didn't find that they had universal appeal. I would love to know where the above poem is published.
December 1, 2007
A fantastic collection; excellent and judicious editing. I read and re-read this collection, almost daily.
April 9, 2016
Beautiful poem prayers.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews