15
August
My
India
Better
than Heaven or Arcadia
I
love thee, O my India!
And
thy love I shall give
To
every brother nation that lives.
God
made the Earth;
Man
made confining countries
And
their fancy-frozen boundaries.
But
with unfound boundless love
I
behold the borderland of my India
Expanding
into the World.
Hail,
mother of religions, lotus, scenic beauty,
and
sages!
Thy
wide doors are open,
Welcoming
God's true sons through all ages.
Where
Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and
men
dream God -
I
am hallowed; my body touched that sod
-
Swami Yogananda, paramhansa
“Is there ought you need that my hands withhold,
Rich
gifts of raiment or grain or gold?
Lo
! I have flung to the East and the West
Priceless
treasures torn from my breast,
And
yielded the sons of my stricken womb
To
the drum-beats of the duty, the sabers of doom…..”
The
Gift of India
"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 lead forward by
thee
into ever-widening thought and
action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my
Father,
let my country awake."
