Name the famous poet who wrote the following lines: "Where the mind is without…

2013

Name the famous poet who wrote the following lines:

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high......"

Answer: C. Rabindranath TagoreConcept: A poet-identification question tests whether you can recognise a poet from the exact opening line(s) of one of their signature works, rather than…

  1. A.

    Sarojini Naidu

  2. B.

    Toru Dutt

  3. C.

    Rabindranath Tagore

  4. D.

    John Milton

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C

Concept: A poet-identification question tests whether you can recognise a poet from the exact opening line(s) of one of their signature works, rather than from a paraphrase or a general theme. The reliable method is to match the precise wording of the quoted line to its known, published source, then confirm it against the poet’s well-documented body of work.

Application: The quoted line, "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high......", is the opening line of poem 35 in Rabindranath Tagore’s "Gitanjali" (Song Offerings) – originally composed in Bengali and rendered into English by Tagore himself. This poem envisions a fearless, unified, rationally awakened nation and is one of the most widely anthologised passages of modern Indian English literature; Gitanjali was central to the international recognition that brought Tagore the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

Cross-check:

  • Sarojini Naidu was a celebrated Indian poet-nationalist known for poems such as "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad" and "The Bangle Sellers" – vivid, sensory verse about Indian life, but she did not write this line.

  • Toru Dutt was a pioneering nineteenth-century Indian English poet remembered chiefly for "Our Casuarina Tree" and "Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan"; she died in 1877, decades before this poem was written, so she cannot be its author.

  • John Milton was a seventeenth-century English poet best known for the epic "Paradise Lost", built on classical and biblical themes in a very different idiom; his work has no connection to this line’s imagery of a fearless, awakened homeland.

Result: The poet who wrote this line is Rabindranath Tagore.

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