SONGS  OF  THE  SEA

SAGAR  SANGIT  OF  C.  R.  DAS

Songs of the Sea

0 thou unhoped-far elusive wonder of the skies,

      Stand still one moment! I will lead thee and bind

      With music to the chambers of my mind.

Behold how calm today this sea before me lies

      And quivering with what tremulous heart of dreams

      In the pale glimmer of the faint moonbeams.

If thou at last art come indeed, 0 mystery, stay

Woven by song into my heart-beats from this day.

Stand, goddess, yet! Into this anthem of the seas

      With the pure strain of my full voiceless heart

      Some rhythm of the rhythmless, some part

Of thee I would weave today, with living harmonies

      Peopling the solitude I am within.

      Wilt thou not here abide on that vast scene,

Thou whose vague raiment edged with dream haunts us and flees,

Fulfilled in an eternal quiet like this sea’s ? 

II 

I lean to thee a listening ear

And thy immense refrain I hear,

0 Ocean circled with the lights of morn.

What word is it thou sing’st? what tune

My heart is filled with, and it soon

Must overflow? What mystical unborn

Spirit is singing in thy white foam-caves?

What voice turns heaven to music from thy waves? 

Page– 359

III 

Long gazing on this dawn and restless sea,

My heart is moved with a strange minstrelsy.

Tranquil and full and slow that music’s sound

Or a chant pitiful, tender and profound.

At times its passing fills my heart with tears.

Maddened it runs and maddening him who hears.

What spirit lives and laughs and weeps in thee?

What thought is here that cries eternally?

I know not, but a trembling sweet and strong

Has taken my every limb touched by thy song,

0 infinite Voice, 0 Soul that callst to me,

As I look on this luminous dawn and on the sea!  

IV

The flute of dawn has rung out on the sea, 

And in a holiday of festal glee

The radiant sunbeams dally and happily stream:

How on thy body they wallow, laugh and gleam!

Flowers blown in song on a bright welter cast!

The riches of sunlight quiver along thy vast

Sweet tumult, kindle the world thy chantings hold,

Or, rocking, for thy feet are chains of gold.

Now has thy cry become a bird of sound,

And on the wings, the throbbing breast around

A dream of gold is smeared; in my heart’s skies

The beautiful vagrant making springtide flies.

There wings the floating mighty creature, joys

Threading and lights, a glory and a voice. 

Page– 360

V 

Upon what bosom shall I lay my bliss

Or whom enrich with all my welling tears,

The unguessed joy, the grief that nameless is

And will not be denied? All checks they pierce.

The riches of my bliss have broken in bloom,

And all my sorrow seeks melodious room.

How have they made of all my secret hours

A kingdom of strange singing in groves of flowers!

A mystic wind, a nameless trouble keeps

My spirit. All the load of my heart’s deeps

Where shall I rest, moved to thy passionate play,

0 Ocean, upon this thy festal day?  

VI 

Dawn has become to me a golden fold

Of shining dreams, hearing thy potent cry.

A marvel chant on every wave is rolled,

And sky and wind repeat one melody.

What hast thou done? My mind has grown a lyre

Whose many hundred strings thy tones inspire;

Thy touch, thy hand have made it eternally

A refrain of thy pride and majesty. 

Page– 361

VII 

Behold, the perfect-gloried dawn has come

Far-floating from eternity her home.

Her limbs are clad in silver light of dreams,

Her brilliant influence on the water streams,

And in that argent flood to one white theme

Are gathering all the hues and threads of dream.

Tricked with her fire the heavens richly fill;

To an eternal chant the winds are still;

And all thy bosom’s deep unquiet taken

Thou hast wrung out and into melody shaken,

And all the sounds that stirred the earth so long

Are called into a wordless trance of song.

0 minstrel of infinity! What world

Soundless has known that music? What ether curled

In voiceless sleep? Where are those notes withdrawn?

Into the hush of what eternal dawn? 

VIII

I have no art of speech, no charm of song,

      Rhythm nor measure nor the lyric pace.

No words alluring to my skill belong.

      Now in me thought’s free termless heavens efface

Limit and mark; upon my spirit is thrown

The shadow of infinity alone.

I at thy voice in brilliant dawn or eve

      Have felt strange formless words within my mind.

Then my heart’s doors wide to thy cry I leave

      And in thy chant I seek myself and find.

Now some few hymns of that dim union sweet

Have filled my soul. I bring them to thy feet. 

Page– 362

IX 

All day within me only one music rings.

I have become a lyre of helpless strings,

And I am but a horn for thee to wind,

0 vast musician! Take me, all thy mind

In light, in gloom, by day, by night express.

Into me, minstrel, breathe thy mightiness.

On solitary shores, in lonely skies,

In night’s huge sieges when the winds blow wild,

In many a lovely land of mysteries,

In many a shadowy realm, or where a child,

Dawn, bright and young, sweet unripe thoughts conceives,

Or through the indifferent calm desireless eves,

In magic night and magic light of thee,

Play on thy instrument, 0 Soul, 0 Sea.

X

What is this play thou playest with my life?

How hast thou parted lids mind held so stiff

Against the vision, that like a bud shut long

My mind has opened only to thy song,

And all my life lies like a yearning flower

Hued, perfumed, quivering in thy murmurous power,

And all my days are grown an infinite strain

Of music sung by thee, 0 shoreless main?

Page– 363

XI 

My heart wings restless with this music’s pain,

Bird of some wonderful harmonious reign:

No time, no place it meets, touches no end,

But rests and flies in melody contained.

Song’s boundless regions have no isle preferred,

Its depths no plummet moment yet has found.

Memories and strange deep silences are heard

Here in thy solitude of shoreless sound.

Thou melody fathomless! 0 sea where floats

Song timeless! What were these immortal notes

To which my heart could silently disclose

The hidden petals of the eternal rose ? 

XII

0 painter, thou thy marvellous art didst use

In green and pearl and blue and countless hues

To make this pattern of myriad flowers untold,

Passions of azure, miracles of gold.

My eyes had hunger for form’s mysteries

And wandered in vision upon colour’s seas.

Paint out these hues! draw darkness like a brush

Over these tired eyelids! blind me, hush!

Ah, not for visible delight I long!

My soul enchanted only by thy song

I will swim out upon thy waves of sound,

0 Voice, and sink into thee for ever drowned.

Then shall I pass into thy hymn, 0 sea.

There shall be nothing else to eternity.

The universe shall but to sound belong,

And Time and Space shall tremble into song. 

Page– 364

XIII 

0 now today like a too brilliant dream

      What is this that thy floating heart reveals

In the full moon’s intense wide-flowing beam ?

      What infinite peace from thy calm moonlight steals

Waking my breast to this unchecked delight ?

What melody moves thee in the luminous night ?

What shadow of a dream from lives long past

      Returns into thy ancient heart, 0 sea?

What bygone virtue comes fulfilled at last ?

      What dead illusion paints this dream on thee ?

A hundred glimmering memories break like flowers

On waves of moonlight in my life’s still hours.

It seems as if a hundred lives’ joy, fears

And burden of their laughter and their tears

Today came round me and incessantly

Sang to my soul their anthem in this sea.

A million lives today have met in one

And float on dream a single flower alone. 

XIV

The day is filled with clouds and dusk and grey.

      Wave sobbing falls on wave; there flowers, there rocks

      A pain unquiet in their broken shocks.

Trembling there moans a large lament today.

The heavens are filled with dusk and sad and grey.

An endless outcry fills my soul today.

       Is’t joy? is’t pain? Are these the depths of love!

       Troubled, restless, peering with wild crests above,

What is it cries, what yearns in thee this day,

0 heart? Thy heavens are full of dusk and grey.

Page– 365