SRI AUROBINDO

Translations

from Sanskrit and Other Languages

II. From Bengali

Chittaranjan Das

Songs of the Sea (Sagar Sangit)

XIII

O 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, O 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.