English Literature

A. A Song of Kabir (Translated by Tagore) It is needless to ask of a saint the caste to which he belongs; For the priest, the warrior. the tradesman, and all the thirty-six castes, alike are seeking for God. It is but folly to ask what the caste of a saint may be; The barber has sought God, the washerwoman, and the carpenter— Even Raidas was a seeker after God. The Rishi Swapacha was a tanner by caste. Hindus and Moslems alike have achieved that End, where remains no mark of distinction. B. About R.N. Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is popularly known as Gurudev, Kabiguru, and Vishwakavi. He is a great Bengali poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, essayist, educationist, music composer and painter. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his Gitanjali in 1913. His Gitanjali is a collection of 103 devotional songs. Our National anthem ‘Jan Gana Mana’ has been composed by him. Tagore’s poetic collections (The Gardener, The Crescent Moon, Fruit Gathering, Stray B...

On the Rule of the Road: A.G. Gardiner A. TEXT: A stout old lady was walking with her basket down the middle of a street in Petrograd to the great confusion of the traffic and with no small peril to herself. It was pointed out to her that the pavement was the place for foot-passengers, but she replied: "I'm going to walk where I like. We've got liberty now." It did not occur to the dear old lady that if liberty entitled the foot-passenger to walk down the middle of the road it also entitled the cab-driver to drive on the pavement, and that the end of such liberty would be universal chaos. Everybody would be getting in everybody else's way and nobody would get anywhere. Individual liberty would have become social anarchy. There is a danger of the world getting liberty-drunk in these days like the old lady with the basket, and it is just as well to remind ourselves of what the rule of the road means. It means that in order that the liberties of all may be p...