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In these lyrics Tagore presents the soul as the passive receiver of God,
who comes in the form of a wayfarer or traveller. Their meeting is predestined,
only the exact hour is uncertain. Hence, the soul must remain alert and vigilant
to receive her Beloved as guest. This period of sleepless waiting is given
specific concrete colour in the image of the cottage by the side of the river
and in the harmony between the speaker and nature. The stormy night setting,
where the sky "groans in despair" and the forest is "frowning," is a powerful
token of the speaker's emotional turbulence. The path of the Beloved in this
context seems perilous and brave.

In the second lyric, the poet uses the simple present form "he comes, comes,
ever comes" to frame the eternally recurrent nature of God's approach. The
present tense itself, sometimes called "the lyric tense "[43] imparts a timeless
dimension to the action. "He comes, comes, ever comes" is not a stage direction
for a single happening, but the performance of an eternal act or ceremony
George T. Wright highlights the effect of the present tense upon the lyric
with his comment:

The actions described seem filtered through imagination or memory,
or performed under a spell; each scene takes on a visionary quality. No matter
how directly the poet speaks, how ordinary his diction, his use of lyric tense
declares his poem a public occasion ... [44]