拉宾德拉纳特·泰戈尔（Rabindranath Tagore，1861—1941），印度诗人、文学家、艺术家、哲学家，1913年获诺贝尔文学奖，是首位获此殊荣的亚洲人。印度人民尊崇并热爱他，称他为诗圣、印度的良心和印度的灵魂。泰戈尔的代表作有《吉檀迦利》、《新月集》、《飞鸟集》等。

      《泰戈尔诗选》属百灵鸟英文经典系列丛书，是印度诗人拉宾德拉纳特·泰戈尔的诗作，本书选取了泰戈尔的两部诗集——《新月集》和《飞鸟集》。《新月集》有一种使人忘记一切艰苦境遇的魅力，使人感到平静安宁；它能把人带到天真的儿童的新月之国里去。短诗集《飞鸟集》则道出了一切事物的意义，含有深刻的哲学见解。

                                                                                        THE HOME

      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 harvest had been reaped, lay silent.

      Suddenly a boy’s shrill voice rose into the sky. He traversed the dark unseen, leaving the track of 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, hidden among the shadows of the banana and the slender areca palm, the cocoa-nut and the dark green jack-fruit trees.

      I stopped for a moment in my lonely way under the starlight, and saw spread before me the darkened 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 of its value for the world.