Analysis of Lord Of My Life by Rabindrabath Tagore

The Poet

Rabindrabath Tagore was an Indian poet who lived between May 7, 1861 and August 7, 1941. According to nobelprize.org website, e was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. 

In his mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common humanity and increased his interest in social reforms."

The Poem

[You Might Want To Click And Listen To The Poem  ]

The Poem In Prose Form

My God! I have surrendered all my pain and pleasure to you. Even though I cherished earthly things more yet you chose. Didn't you make miraculous acts off my living, actions and hopes? Didn't you make music off my autumn and spring, "and gather the flowers from my mature moments for thy crown?"

God! Many numbers of time, I neglected services to you; hope you have forgiven my sins because you keep staring "at the dark of my heart". Often your voice slackens my instrument of play only to fill my evening with weeping after what seems like wasted day.

God! Is my life meeting closure? Because the arms I wrap around you keeps growing limp or weak and the kisses I bestow you are now without teeth. If so, end this old age meeting with you and renew my old age with new life_ for our union to begin again in a new ceremony of life.

The Connotation

Lord of My Life by Rabindrabath Tagore is a five stanza free verse with the theme of God's supremacy, aging, early living, nature's beauty, death as a human closure, and the renewal of life through resurrection; simply put, the poem is about the poet's old age and devotion to God.

The poem employed the images of music to expressed how his life events has flowed in the hand of his creator. As earlier explained in the prose form of the poem, the poet's submission to God is seen in stanza one. 

Stanza two tells of the magic God made off his earth existence while sin and forgiveness were subjects of stanza three. Stanza four revealed the poet's emptiness when far away from his creator. The final stanza embodied old age, fidgeting, death and resurrection.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)