July 17, 2008

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held 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 habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening
thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

by Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941)

I was introduced to this poem when I was in elementary school.
We would copy the poems from
the black board and transcribe
them in our copy books.
We were also expected to memorize
and recite them
in our class. This was one of my favourite poems.
It brings back fond memories of my childhood days.