"Unending Love"

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell -
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.



Written in 1889 by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Translated by William Radice




On this day 65 years ago, my Mum and Dad were married in St. Clement's Church, Leigh-on-Sea. They had met two years earlier, in 1947, in the ballroom at the Kursaal in Southend-on-Sea, when Dad shyly asked Mum to dance with him. Five years ago, on their 60th anniversary, they renewed their marriage vows in St. Luke's Church, Tiptree before a congregation which included their family and friends. They are as much in love today as they were on 19th November 1949, when they became husband and wife and embarked on their life's journey together. The framed photograph of them in my blipfoto was taken before they were married, at Hadleigh Castle in Essex.

Although we had to celebrate this rare and wonderful milestone in Dad's hospital ward, there were anniversary balloons, a cake and cards. I had taken photos of all the flowers given to them, so that Dad could still enjoy seeing them even though flowers are not allowed in hospital. More important than anything was that Mum and Dad were able to be together today, and with their two surviving daughters and eldest grand-daughter beside them.