Rabindranath Tagore

Creative Unity Rabindranath Tagore

I remember, when I was a child, that a row of cocoanut trees by our garden wall, withtheir branches beckoning the rising sun on the horizon, gave me a companionship as livingas I was myself. I know it was my imagination which transmuted the world around me intomy own world-the imagination which seeks unity, which deals with it. But we have toconsider that this companionship was true; that the universe in which I was born had in itan element profoundly akin to my own imaginative mind, one which wakens in allchildren's natures the Creator, whose pleasure is in interweaving the web of creation withHis own patterns of many-coloured strands. It is something akin to us, and thereforeharmonious to our imagination. When we find some strings vibrating in unison with others, we know that this sympathy carries in it an eternal reality. The fact that the world stirs ourimagination in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth both inus and in the heart of existence. Wordsworth says: I'd rather beA pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.