পারস্য-যাত্রী
২৫ মে ১৯৩২
বোগদাদে ইরাক-সম্রাট-কর্তৃক সংবর্ধনা
কবির উত্তর
I heartily thank your Majesty for the kind invitation to your kingdom and the hospitality graciously offered to me tonight.
Not being a man of any political importance, not having any significant place in the confederacy of nations that are swaying the material destiny of the present-day world I might have considered such an honour as ill-fitted to a person like myself. But I am certain that it is meant for the cause I espouse and the vocation that I claim to be mine own. And therefore I must never shrink from it in false modesty but congratulate one of the modern rulers of men and shapers of history for the recognition he has offered to a member of the fellowship of poets whose mission it is to light lamps along the unending path of human culture. I cannot help rejoicing at the fact that in spite of an insistent preoccupation of utilitarian urgency of this machine-driven age a man of letters finds his welcome in this distracted world for any service he may have rendered to humanity in her all but repressed desire for spiritual self-realisation.
In ancient Asia the men whose function was to make human mind fertile with living wealth of beauty and noble aspiration received their highest rewards from the monarchs not merely in a spirit of patronage but that of a high responsibility and cultured appreciation. I am sure that this individual fact of a poet belonging to a distant corner of the earth and speaking a different language finding his seat of welcome at your Majesty’s table this evening is not a mere accident but has a deeper historical significance. It is a generous gesture of the national self-respect of a renascent
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