In the following essay, Singh discusses Tagore's international literary and social influence, explaining how the poetic mastery of Tagore's Song Offerings, in which "60" appears, won the praise of poets like W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound.

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, playwright, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and philosopher wrote mostly in his mother tongue Bengali, but also in English. He founded at Santiniketan an international university, Vishva Bharati, which was to be a bridge between the cultures of the East and the West, and whose motto is: "where the whole world forms its single nest." A patriot to the core - "I shall be born in India again and again, with all the poverty, misery, and wretchedness" - Tagore sided with England on the eve of World War II in 1939, declaring that "no Indian can wish England to lose the war she is fighting for the sake of...