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Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta on May 6, 1861. He was the grandson of Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, who was one of the most enlightened intellectual leaders of Bengal more than a century ago. The eldest son of the Prince was named Debendranath Tagore. He became universally known and loved throughout India, receiving the venerable title 'Maharshi', which means, when translated, 'Great Saint.'

The poet was the youngest son of Maharshi. His mother died when he was quite young. From childhood onwards, a love of solitude and peace became natural to the young child, and he grew up with a deeply sensitive and imaginative nature.

The story of his childhood was told to me in the following words, which I have often repeated: 'I was very lonely - that was the chief feature of my childhood. My father I saw very seldom: he was away a great deal, but his presence pervaded the whole house, and was one of the deepest influences on my life.

Kept in charge of the servants after my mother died, I used to sit, day after day, in front of the window and picture to myself what was going on in the outer world. From the very first time I can remember, I was passionately fond of Nature... I had such an exceeding love for Nature, I cannot tell how to describe it to you: 'but Nature was a kind of loving companion always with me, and always revealing to me some fresh beauty.'

His illumination as a poet came to him when he was eighteen, and his writings began afterwards to pour forth in profuse abundance. They were chiefly of a lyrical character, and some of his most beautiful Bengali poems were written at this early stage of his long life as a poet.

His father sent him to do practical work among the village people at Shileida, on the banks of the River Padma. He was married, and had five children, two sons and three daughters. 'The Padma River is one of the branches of the Ganges, as it divides into a delta near the sea.

The young poet's love of solitude had full scope here, even in the midst of an active married life; for he used to retire from time to time and live, for months together, alone in a house-boat moored to the sand flats in the midst of the river. He kept at other times in closest touch with the villagers owing to his practical work. During the twenty years, from 1880 to 1900, he composed not only his lyrical poems, but also dramas, short stories, and novels, which have made him famous in Bengali literature as a master of prose as well as the greatest Indian poet of his age.

But when the twentieth century dawned, he became restless, and knew for certain that a time of change had been reached. In the end, amid many financial difficulties, he founded his school at Santiniketan, where his father, Maharshi, had long ago retired for meditation.

Here, Rabindranath Tagore settled down to teach the young children who gathered round him. In his school method, he avoided as much as possible all formal and conventional teaching, and adopted new and living personal ways of inspiring a keen desire for learning among his pupils. He also taught his children to love the open-air life in the midst of nature. This school has now become world-famous on account of its advanced and progressive educational character.

But while the school flourished under the poet's fostering care, his own life underwent a great change. This was almost equivalent to a second spiritual birth. For in a brief space of time his own loved wife died and also his youngest daughter.

Then followed the third crowning sorrow in the death, owing to cholera, of his youngest son, who was already showing signs of wonderful poetic genius, not unlike his father's. Yet out of the depth of all this suffering there came to the poet himself a new sense of the fullness and beauty of human life. He has expressed this in Gitanjali, where he writes:

'O thou last fulfilment of life, Death, my death, come and whisper to me!

'Day after day have I kept watch for thee: for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.

'All that I am, that I have, that I hope, and all my love have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy.

'One final glance from thine eyes and my life will be ever thine own.'

The poet visited England in the year 1912, after a prolonged illness. He went there in the first place in order to undergo a very serious operation; but this visit unexpectedly opened to him the door of the West.

His own English translations of his Bengali poems began now to appear. These, while still in manuscript and unpublished, had attracted the attention of the Irish poet, W. B. Yeats, who wrote about them as follows:

'I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long.'

After his visit to Europe and America in 1912 and 1913, and the award of the Nobel Prize for World Literature, Rabindranath Tagore's life gradually widened out towards a larger horizon, embracing all humanity.

His heart has been drawn more and more towards the solution of the new problem of the meeting of the races of the world together in mutual harmony and love. He has also sought means for the removal of the alarming evil of growing colour prejudice. This latter appeared to him to be one of the worst portents of the modern age, afflicting mankind. He wrote to me in the year 1913:

'This race problem is I believe the one burning question of the present age; and we must be prepared to go through the martyrdom of suffering and humiliation till the victory of God in man is achieved.' Tagore's three philosophical works in English, called Sadhana, Personality, and Creative Unity, were written during these years.

They have the thought of universal humanity in view. His poems contained in Fruit-Gathering and Crossing strike the same note of the gradual coming into being of the one Nation of Man. This is explained in a concrete manner in Nationalism.

His translations of Kabir's poems, from which I have freely quoted, express the same thought. Very often, beneath the simple imagery taken from Nature, this deeper philosophy of human life is represented in poetic form. Such a phrase, for instance, as

'Have you not heard the notes which the Unstruck Music is playing?'

may be referred to this harmony in Man which is being slowly reached by the power of the divine urge from within.

Rabindranath Tagore has now reached old age. He is nearly seventy years old. His health of late has been very greatly impaired, but his ardent lovers and admirers all over the world will earnestly pray that his life may be prolonged, in God's providence, for further blessing to mankind.

Continued next week

-Tagore Birthday Book.

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