Who really said it

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky

Q: Did Rabindranath Tagore say "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky"?

Yes. This is verse 292 of 'Stray Birds' (The Macmillan Company, 1916), Tagore's own English translation of his Bengali aphorisms. The line is genuinely his — but his 1916 text reads "Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky." The version that circulates online drops "from other days" and Americanizes "shed rain / give colour" into "carry rain / add color."

Written by Rabindranath Tagore 1861–1941 · Bengali poet, Nobel laureate (1913)

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This is verse 292 of ‘Stray Birds’ (The Macmillan Company, 1916), Tagore’s own English translation of his Bengali aphorisms. The line is genuinely his — but his 1916 text reads “Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.” The version that circulates online drops “from other days” and Americanizes “shed rain / give colour” into “carry rain / add color.”

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky” Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, verse 292 (Macmillan, 1916). Original wording: "Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky."

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In context

Evoking the world of Rabindranath Tagore — Bengali poet, essayist & composer; 1913 Nobel laureate in Literature. Theme: "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Work: Stray Birds, verse 292
Author: Rabindranath Tagore
First published: The Macmillan Company, New York, 1916
Translation: Tagore’s own English rendering of his Bengali aphorisms

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

Verse 292 as printed in the 1916 Macmillan first edition. Note “from other days,” “shed rain,” and the British “give colour” — all smoothed away in the version now shared online.

Stray Birds, full text (Project Gutenberg)

How we traced it

The 1916 Macmillan first edition, digitized at Project Gutenberg, prints verse 292 as “…from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.”
The same original wording appears in the Internet Archive scan and the ibiblio full text, confirming the source is not in doubt.
Quote sites such as Goodreads reproduce the altered “carry rain…add color” wording — still correctly crediting Tagore and Stray Birds.

Public domain

‘Stray Birds’ was first published in 1916 by The Macmillan Company, well before the 1931 U.S. public-domain cutoff, and the English is Tagore’s own translation — so no separate later-translator copyright attaches. The verse is in the public domain in the United States.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

The wording drift

The attribution here is right — this really is Tagore. What changed is the words. The line now shared on quote sites and prints is a lightly modernized rewrite of his 1916 original.

Rabindranath Tagore (Stray Birds, 1916) paraphrase

Tagore wrote “Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.” The popular version drops “from other days” and swaps in “carry rain” and the American “add color” — as seen on Goodreads.

Correctly Tagore, correctly ‘Stray Birds’ — but the verified 1916 text reads “…from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky,” per Project Gutenberg.

Context

Why it resonates

‘Stray Birds’ gathers hundreds of terse, image-driven verses Tagore translated from his own Bengali. Verse 292 turns storm-clouds into evening colour — a late-life image of memory and acceptance rather than threat, which is why it travels so well on cards, posters, and sympathy notes.

The changes it picked up are the ordinary erosion of a much-shared line: a dropped clause, a smoother verb, an Americanized spelling. The thought is entirely Tagore’s; only the surface was sanded down.

“…no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.”

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Stray Birds (full text)gutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg edition of the 1916 Macmillan text; verse 292 in Tagore’s original wording.

Stray Birds (1916 scan)archive.org

Internet Archive digitization of the first edition, confirming the original line.

Stray Birdsibiblio.org

Clean full-text edition citing Macmillan, 1916; verse 292 verbatim.

Shows the widely circulated “carry rain…add color” variant, still credited to Tagore/Stray Birds.

Rabindranath Tagoreen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author and context on his self-translated English works.

Stray Birdsen.wikisource.org

Wikisource transcription of the collection for cross-checking verse numbering.

The true author

About Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

1861–1941 · Bengali poet, essayist & composer; 1913 Nobel laureate in Literature

Rabindranath Tagore was the towering figure of modern Bengali literature and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), largely on the strength of his own English translation of Gitanjali. Stray Birds (1916) is a collection of several hundred brief, epigrammatic verses he rendered into English from his Bengali. His genuinely aphoristic style makes him an easy magnet for both real short quotes and later paraphrases.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Rabindranath Tagore, “292,” in Stray Birds (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916).

MLA (9th ed.)

Tagore, Rabindranath. “292.” Stray Birds, The Macmillan Company, 1916.

APA (7th ed.)

Tagore, R. (1916). Stray Birds. The Macmillan Company.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/clouds-come-floating-into-my-life-no-longer-to-carry-rain