Rabindranath Thakur (1861 - 1941) was a man of diverse talent, who stands out above all others as a stalwart in Bengali literature and music.
In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Prize "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West".
In his acceptance of the Prize he wrote, “I beg to convey to the Nobel Academy my grateful appreciation for the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother".
The following is a verse from the translation of Gitanjali by Rabindranath Thakur.
Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever widening thought and action.
In to that heaven of freedom, my father,
let My Country Awake!
