Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

Tagore sought "the play of feeling and not of action". The original though prized in Bengal long failed to spawn a "free and comprehensible" translation and its archaic and sonorous didacticism failed to attract interest from abroad. Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astoniRabindranath Tagored Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.

Rabindranath Thakur anglicised to Tagore[About this sound] pronunciation (help·info) (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) sobriquet Gurudev was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works and his verse short stories and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism colloquialism naturalism and unnatural contemplation. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures.