After reading the translations pf Tagore’s compositions, WB Yeats says that there was nothing earlier that had stirred his blood as for years. He might have revised his opinion later, and he did it, but there is still something in the first impact the poetry had made on him, and all over the literary world of the time. An Indian friend of his said, “I read Rabindranath every day, to read one line of his is to forget all the troubles of the world.” Yeats responds: “For all I know, so abundant and simple is this poetry, the new renaissance has been born in your country and I shall never know of it except by hearsay.” In the world of the modern Rishi, “squirrels come from the boughs and climb on to his knees and the birds alight upon his hands.” That’s poetry. There’s everywhere “a sense of visible beauty and meaning”.

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