Tagore, the great Indian philosopher and poet, examines time in the poem in relation to the time of the universe, or God's time, versus the constraints of the human experience of time.
In the first lines the poet says"
"Time is endless in thy hands, my lord... Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower."
In other words, in the endless stretch of time, the perfection of a single flower, through the process of evolution, is the timetable of the cosmos.
In stark contrast, the timetable of humanity, is, according to Tagore:
"We have no time to lose,
and having no time we must scramble for a chance."
In other words, humanity spends their lives scraping and struggling to survive, grasping at the immediate.
This leads to the conclusion:
"And thus it is that time goes by while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last."
Time is given to coarse everyday matters, and never given to that thing most deserving of it, God, or the greater force in life.
Finally, he says:
"At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut;
but I find that yet there is time."
So the poet fears being, at death, shut off from God, and so tries to shed the world's time schedule to make time for the more important matters of the soul. In so doing, he sees there is always time to be found for that.
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