Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/33

 CHAPTER II BOY AND MAN

"Please, sir, tell me still more," said the son. "Be it so, my child," the father replied.

was born in Calcutta in 1861, son of the Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, who gave lustre to a name already honoured throughout India. As for the surname, changed familiarly over here into Tagore, it is in the original "Thakur," which means literally a god or a lord.

He lost his mother when he was still a child, and this loss meant a great deal to him. It gave him a peculiar regret for the mother's love, so sharply broken off in his experience; and further, it threw him back upon the consolations to be had in that boyish communion with Nature which helped to fill the solitary days of his childhood. Hear his own account of these years, as given to a friend: 9