infancy and timelessness

it is amazing how a poet sees the deepest meaning in the most 'taken-for-granted' things, even when he is writing prose :) i was reading this essay by Tagore last night and there are many such observations in its three-four page length. Although not of the caliber of Tagore, may be a poem or two will emerge from my pen after reading and re-reading this essay many times :)

"There is a timelessness in these nursery rhymes. They never carry any indication of who wrote them, and no one ever thinks to ask on which day or in which year they were written. Because of this inherent timelessness, even if they were written in our own day they are ancient, and even if they were written thousands of years ago they are new.

If you look closely, you see that there is nothing as ancient as infancy. Adults have been changed in many different ways by place, time, education and custom, but infants are the same today as they were a hundred thousand years ago. Unchanging ancientness in born into human homes again and again in the form of a baby, yet the freshness, beauty, innocence and sweetness it had at the beginning of history is the same today. The reason for this eternal newness is that infants are the creations of Nature. But adults are to a very great extent man's own making. In the same way, nursery rhymes are infant-literature; they are born spontaneously and naturally in the human mind."

from, 'An Essay on Nursery Rhymes' (1907) by Tagore
- The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature

would sure like to know your views on this. thanks for reading.