[89] _Mary Magdalene_ by Maurice Maeterlinck, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, New York, 1910, Act IV. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. [90] _Some Modern Belgian Writers_ by Turquet Milnes, New York, 1917. CHAPTER X RABINDRANATH TAGORE: BENGALESE MYSTIC-POET The prize for the year 1913 has been awarded: Rabindranath Tagore, born 1861: “For reason of the inner depth and the high aim revealed in his poetic writings; also for the brilliant way in which he translates the beauty and freshness of his Oriental thought into the accepted forms of Western _belles-lettres_.”[91] As a Bengalese, Rabindranath Tagore, to whom the Nobel prize was given in 1913, is a British subject. Thus, for the second time, the honor came to Great Britain through the writings of one whose formative years, like those of Kipling, had been spent in India and whose typical writings were associated with that country. On the contrary, the words and thoughts of this mystic-poet are so exotic, sometimes so unlocalized in form and spirit, that they belong to world literature, rather than to a distinctive country. Possibly no other prize winner has been so idealistic, so international in his appeal as this author of _The Gardener_, _Sadhana_, and _The King of the Dark Chamber_. In his biographical study,[92] Ernest Rhys suggests that the award was given to Tagore because of the enthusiasm of a Swedish Orientalist for his writings before they were known in English. The year before the award, however, Yeats had praised the poems of Tagore[93] and other poet-critics had found him an inspirational influence. To the winner, the announcement gave mingled gratitude and regret; the latter he expressed in his sentence, “They have taken away my refuge.”[94] His life had been so untouched by external struggles that he was, in truth, “a child of Nature.” In _My Reminiscences_, he writes: “From my earliest years I enjoyed a simple and intimate communion with Nature. Each one of the cocoanut trees in our garden had for me a distinct personality.... On opening my eyes every morning, the blithely awakening world used to call me to join it like a playmate.”[95]