Measure your debts in not coins but hours,
And favours like lost seasons on hold.
Sacrifices know not bejewelled towers,
Your dreams are too new; this world, too old.
Not every mirror you see shall please
Your longing; except to coarsely refine,
Like blustery depths of the quietest seas,
Like the slow-mourned loss of a learned design.
But if wit, and song, and toil be your rain,
And if sorrows dissolve—not harden—to a ditty:
Know that mortals lack the knowledge of pain,
For suffering is the price of immortality.
Photograph Courtesy: Image by Garten G.G., Pixabay.
Arup K. Chatterjee 