The Bengali Book of English Verse/Night on the Ganges (Govin Chunder Dutt)
Night on the Ganges.
How beautiful the glorious night would be,
How much more lovely than the garish day,
If thus for ever she arrayed herself!
The moon is up—high on the cloudless sky,
Over the towering mast she brightly gleams,
Pale, like a lady sick with silent grief,
Showering her beams on everything around,
And clear defining every rope and spar
Of this our gallant bark, whose shadow falls
Enormous, on the smooth reflecting wave.
In this pure light the eye with ease discerns
Each distant object that it sees by day,
And freed from every fault that sunbeams show.
It seems, indeed, a clear meridian noon
Reft of its heat, its turmoil, and its strife,
Its busy wasting cares, its stunning noise,
Its idle flouting glare, and scorching winds.
Naught now disturbs the stillness of the scene—
The holy stillness—save the cricket's song
That lulls each weary sense to pleasant sleep
By shrill monotony, and the night-bird's lay.
Anon that lay is hushed. The fishes leap
Up in the clear moonlight from out the wave,
Then fall again and raise a sullen splash;
The huge unwieldy porpoise rolling out,
Sinks down immediate. Sudden from the glade,
A spectral, hollow, long-repeated cry
Of wild ducks in alarm comes loud and shrill,
Blent with the famished jackal's harsher voice,
As ruthlessly that tyrant's steps pursue
These harmless dwellers of the tangled brakes.
Soft spread the dews upon the fragrant earth,
Beading with orient pearls the silken grass,
And emerald leaves of trees upon the banks
That bound with green the dim horizon's verge,
On every side, save that in which the stream
Loses itself amid the bending sky.
How pleasant now, at ease reclined to mark
The sombre shadows of each varying tree:
The mangoe here, with countless leaves adorned,
Casts densest shade, and there the towering palm
Mirrors its length. The scented baubool next
With fragrant yellow flowers and clust'ring leaves,
Bends o'er the wave to see its image fair.
One mass of green the trees far off appear,
And cast new shadows on the flood below.
The ample Ghaut its thousand pillars rears
In the dim moonshine, looking vast and pale,
Untenanted and cold, sublimely grand;
And the high temple with its upward points,
Shaded by moonlight like a phantom, looms
In dim mysterious beauty. At this time,
The spirit of eternal peace seems thrown
On every object, and the rudest breast
Is filled with pure and unimpassioned thoughts.
May such a calmness in my dying hour
Encircle me, while those I dearly love
Stand by—not mourning—and may my passing soul
Partake in that mysterious, awful time
The peace and stillness of the scene around.