SRI AUROBINDO

Translations

from Sanskrit and Other Languages

II. From Bengali

Chittaranjan Das

Songs of the Sea (Sagar Sangit)

XXXII

Lighting small lamps and in a little room

I played and poorly hummed a trivial theme;

With the lamp’s rays on my soul’s half-lit gloom

I traced the image of a bounded dream.

Thee I had quite forgotten, Ocean vast:

Well did my dream-bound little play-room please,

An idly-plaited wreath before me placed,

Holding my petty lamp, content, at ease.

Then with thy solemn thunders didst thou call

Chanting eternity in thy deep strain;

Thy huge rebuke shook all my nature, all

The narrow coasts of thought sank crumbling in.

Collapsed that play-room and that lamp was quenched.

I stood in Ocean’s thunders washed and drenched.