The text of the Aratrika hymns, the four vesper songs sung worldwide in the centres of the Ramakrishna Order. The Ramanam includes a complete version of the "Varnanam" as well as the four traditional songs. Text in Sanskrit with transliteration, English translation, and guide to pronunciation.
What about this marvelous experience of standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty, and of working a whole life, joyful, free -- not goaded on to work like slaves by false human love or ambition?Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.
-Swami Vivekananda