"He is a poet of the highest category, and also a mystic. Such a combination has happened only once or twice before – in Kahlil Gibran, in Friedrich Nietzsche, and in Rabindranath Tagore. With these three persons, the whole category is finished. In the long history of man, it is extraordinary. There have been great poets and there have been great mystics. There have been great poets with a little mysticism in them, and there have been great mystics who have expressed themselves in poetry – but their poetry is not great. Rabindranath is in a strange situation.

"I have heard about a man who loved two beautiful women and was always in trouble, because even one woman is trouble enough. Both of the women wanted to know whom he loved the most. They took him for a ride on the lake in a motorboat, and just in the middle of the lake they stopped the boat and they told the man: 'It has to be decided, because it is heavy on our hearts. Once we know we will become slowly, slowly tolerant about it; we may accept it. But remaining in the dark and always thinking about it has become a wound.'

"The man said, 'What is the matter? Ask directly.'

"Both the women said together: 'Our question is, 'Whom do you love the most?''

"The man fell into deep silence – it was such a strange situation in the middle of the lake – but he must have been a man of great humor. He said, 'I love each of you more than the other.' And both women were satisfied. That's what they wanted.

"It is difficult to say about Rabindranath whether he is a greater poet or a greater mystic. He is both – greater than each – and to be in the twentieth century.

"Rabindranath was not a man confined to this country. He was a world traveler, educated in the West, and he was continually moving around the world in different countries – he loved to be a wanderer. He was a citizen of the universe, yet his roots were deep in this country. He may have flown far away like an eagle across the sun, but he kept on coming back to his small nest."