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“Words from the Depth of Truth” is a three-stanza poem attributed to Rabindranath Tagore by Scroll. It depicts soldiers invoking Buddha’s blessing as they prepare to wage war, exposing a sharp contradiction between religious devotion and violence against civilians and culture. Scroll places the poem in the context of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937, but does not give an exact composition date or original publication record.
What happens in “Words from the Depth of Truth”?
Scroll reproduces the poem in three stanzas. Each returns to the image of soldiers marching to the temple of Buddha to claim his blessing while setting out to inflict violence. The opening establishes the poem’s atmosphere: “The war drums are sounded. / Men force their features into frightfulness and gnash their teeth;” (Scroll).
The poem’s violence reaches beyond the battlefield. It describes suffering inflicted on families and homes, damage to cultural places and marketplaces, deaths and injuries, and the deployment of untruths. These images make civilian life—not just military conflict—central to the poem’s account of war.
How does the poem connect Buddhism and violence?
The repeated appeal to Buddha’s blessing sits uneasily beside the soldiers’ preparations for destruction. The poem’s force comes from that collision: a sacred ritual is invoked in support of actions that devastate people, homes, and culture. This is a reading of the poem’s imagery, not a separately documented statement of Tagore’s intent.
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By returning to the temple refrain across the three stanzas, the poem makes the contradiction persistent rather than incidental. Its focus on civilian and cultural damage also widens the moral question: the violence described is not confined to combatants or the battlefield.
When was it written, and what is known about its publication?
Scroll reports that Tagore wrote the poem after the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937. That establishes the context reported by the article, not a verified composition date: Scroll gives neither a precise date nor an original publication venue. The available identification also does not establish an original Bengali title.
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A bibliographic listing confirms the existence of The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume 1: Poems, edited by Sisir Kumar Das and published by Sahitya Akademi in 1994. It does not confirm that this particular poem appears in the volume, so its contents should be checked before treating it as a source for the poem (IIT Kanpur bibliographic listing).
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is this the same poem as Gitanjali 35?
No. The title phrase can be confused with a line in a different Tagore poem. Gitanjali 35 contains the line “Where words come out from the depth of truth”; that poem is not the war poem reproduced by Scroll.
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| Work | How to identify it | Edition or context documented by these sources |
|---|---|---|
| “Words from the Depth of Truth” | War drums, soldiers, the temple of Buddha, and destruction | Scroll attributes it to Tagore and reports a context after the war began in 1937; no exact composition date or original publication is given (Scroll). |
| Gitanjali 35 | Includes “Where words come out from the depth of truth” | The University of Toronto’s Representative Poetry Online associates it with the 1913 Macmillan edition of Gitanjali (Representative Poetry Online). |
The Academy of American Poets also presents Gitanjali 35 and credits its text to a 1916 Macmillan edition (Academy of American Poets). These edition references concern Gitanjali 35; they do not identify it as the war poem. An Oxford Academic presentation likewise concerns Gitanjali 35, not the separate work titled “Words from the Depth of Truth” (Oxford Academic).
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