poet; and enough has been said now of the land of Gaur or Bengal to show how propitious were its sun, its soil, and its air to the genius of Rabindranath Tagore. It enabled him to have faith alike in the spirit of poetry, in the sympathy of his hearers, and in himself whose fibres were so strung, in accord with its traditional ragas, that they answered instinctively to its lightest call.
One other poet might have been added to the roll of his forerunners, in some ways the most nearly related to him of them all. This is Nimai or Chaitanya Deva; but it is in regard to a special book, Gitanjali, that we can best range his influence and mysterious powers, which after many centuries are still alive in India; and the account of his career may be left to that chapter.
