Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/116

 the creature-self, the shroud of dust, the night black as a black-stone.

It was an emotion so sure of itself that it made no effort after novelty or originality, but took the things that occur to us all, and dwelt upon them, and made them alive, and musical and significant. Their effect on those who read them was curious; one famous English critic expressed this effect half humorously when he said: "I have met several people, not easily impressed, who could not read that book without tears. As for me, I read a few pages and then put it down, feeling it to be too good for me. The rest of it I mean to read in the next world.…"

To explain the true incidence of song is always lost endeavour. All one can do is to say the lyric fire is there for those who can and care to receive it; and for the others, of what use to try to convince them? You cannot force a reader to like Shelley, or understand the innocence of Blake, any more than you can make an unmusical ear delight in "Aderyn Pur" or the original air of "Lhude sing Cuccu."

The wonder is that a poet born abroad with another mother-tongue than ours should have been able to use English with so sure and