Tagore and some Contemporaries

Poet Yeats on Tagore at a dinner held in his honour in London July 1912:

"To take part in honouring Mr. Rabindranath Tagore is one of the greatest events of my artistic life. I have been carrying about with me a book of translations into English prose of a hundred of his Bengali lyrics written within the last ten years. I know of no one in my time who had done anything in the English language to equal these lyrics."

Tagore in his reply:

"......The monsoon clouds, generated on the banks of the Nile, fertilise the far distant shores of the Ganga; ideas may have to cross from the East to Western shores to find welcome in men's hearts and fulfil their promise. East is East and West is West. God forbid that it should be otherwise- but the twain must meet in amity, peace and understanding, their meeting will be all the more fruitful because of their differences; it must lead both to holy wedlock before the common altar of humanity."