If the
civilization of Bengal remains unbroken, if that common mind
which--as one divines--runs through all, is not, as with us,
broken into a dozen minds that know nothing of each other,
something even of what is most subtle in these verses will have
come, in a few generations, to the beggar on the roads. When
there was but one mind in England, Chaucer wrote his _Troilus
and Cressida_, and thought he had written to be read, or to be
read out--for our time was coming on apace--he was sung by
minstrels for a while. Rabindranath Tagore, like Chaucer's
forerunners, writes music for his words, and one understands at
every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in
his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something
which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence.
These verses will not lie in little well-printed books upon
ladies' tables, who turn the pages with indolent hands that they
may sigh over a life without meaning, which is yet all they can
know of life, or be carried by students at the university to be
laid aside when the work of life begins, but, as the generations
pass, travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon
the rivers.
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