The Sea-Songs of C. R. Das

The Sea-Songs of C. R. Das ¹

"A wake up my glory;
A wake psaltery and harp;
I myself will awake early."

PSALM 57–8.

[The late Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das was better known as a lawyer and politician than as a poet. He wrote and published five books of poems: Malancha, Antarjami, Kishore-Kishori, Mala, and Sagar-Sangita of which the last-mentioned is his masterpiece. The last desire of our poet, as he said to Mahatma Gandhi in Darjeeling a few days before his death, was to live a poet's life in a cottage on the banks of the Ganges, after initiating his countrymen into the mysteries of self-rule as enunciated in the Gita.

I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness to Sri Aurobindo Ghose for the use in my article of one of his renderings of the Sea-Songs. Readers can get a good idea of these from Mr. Ghose's renderings of them.]

The peculiar feature of the sea-songs of C. R. Das is that they are unlike any similar things with which the Western reader is acquainted. The Odyssey of the first European bard is, so to say, one long and continuous song of the sea, inasmuch as it describes the adventures ‘on the land and sea’ of Odysseus, ‘a man of many thoughts, and a man of many woes,’ who, nevertheless, is always in quest of new adventures, and who, as conceived by Tasso, Pulci, and especially Dante, tempts the seas once more on his return to his island-kingdom of Ithaca after a prolonged absence of twenty years. In the following lines of Alfred Tennyson:

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me–
"That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;
"Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."

But all this is on the physical plane, as are the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem "Beowulf" and the lyric or half-lyric monody of the early English bard, the sea-farer, if we except its allegorical second part.

Among modern English poets there has been no lack of singers of the sea; it is fitting that it should be so, for the forefathers of the English were called "Sea-Wolves" by a contemporary Roman bard, and English critics exult over this fact even now. It is thus that Cunningham sang in the vein of the merry old English sailor; and more modern English bards like Sir Henry Newbolt, the author of "Drake's Drums and Other Poems" and Rudyard Kipling, the singer of "Songs of the Sea" have been sea-poets. Swinburne in whose veins flowed the blood of the sea, who was called the ‘sea-mew’ in childhood and who wrote of the sea as his mother, is one of the most outstanding sea-poets of England. His sea-poems have, therefore, been as grand, as solitary and as ‘endless’ as the sea itself. But his poems lack any high spiritual significance, though some sort of spiritual or rather symbolical significance has been read into his sea-poems by some critics of his poetry. This we get in one English sea-song par excellence–the last poem of Tennyson, "Crossing the Bar" which may be regarded as his swan-song:

"Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

 

"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

 

"Twilight and evening bell,
And after the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

 

"For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar."

But in India, the home of spirituality, the idea which interpenetrates the sea-songs of C. R. Das has been as old as the Mahabharata, for in the Gita, Ch. 12-7, this mundane world and death even have been compared to seas. The Panchatantra and the Hitopadesa contain many popular verses; one of which has been rendered into English as follows:

"And on the mighty ocean's waves
Two floating logs together come
And having met for ever part
So briefly joined are living beings."

The idea contained in these lines has been reproduced by Matthew Arnold in his touching poem, "The Terrace at Berne" on his beloved Marguerite:

"Like driftwood spars which meet and pass
Upon the boundless ocean-plain,
So on the sea of life, alas!
Man nears man, meets, and leaves again."

Sankaracharya in his "Club that Shatters All Error" conceived this world as an ocean, Bhavarnava; and, in similar ideas lies the germ of hundreds of popular Vaishnavite songs in Bengal which represent Hari or God as the Pilot of this shoreless and endless ocean-like world, and glorify Him as Bhavakandari and Akulakandari Hari. The late Mr. C. R. Das, a very devout Vaishnava himself, was led to these ideas when he heard the divine music of the sea amidst the clash and clang of wave on wave, and the greatest of all musicians put him in mind of, and in communion with the be-all and end-all of his existence, Krishna or Hari Who is God the Absolute according to Hindu religious ideas.

Sagar-Sangita or Sea-Songs is a collection of forty-nine pieces besides an introductory poem, written in metres which are impassioned and diversified. The predominant metre used, however, is the couplet not end-stopped; it is as free as the sea-wind itself. The rhythm of the sea-waves seems to have sent the poet off to such a ‘rhythm as goes on with such a rush that it is enough to carry the world away.’ The words used are pregnant with meaning; few are negligible; all have combined to add a sombre glory to the whole poem which is really a sequence of sea-songs. The origin of this flower of devotion is not, however, steeped in obscurity. Said a distinguished friend of the poet in an obituary notice: "On an outward voyage from England to India, I believe in October 1912, I saw him sitting on the top-deck writing poems when most of the passengers were asleep in their cabins. He told me that the undisturbed sound of the waves inspired him." Thus it was that the poem was born–which will ever be lodged with power in the hearts of all who care for true poetry, poetry that is born in the soul and rushes out of the soul in torrential streams of magical verse.

The poem opens with an introduction in which the poet invokes Poesy or Imagination in the following manner:

"O thou unhoped for, elusive maiden mine,
Stand for a space: with rhyme let me entwine,
Let me weave thee. Lo! how the sea today
In pale moonlight calm, in what a dream's sway
Pants and wavers and vibrates in what bliss!
O what a dream and how too full of peace!
If thou art come indeed, O Mystery!
Stand still in my soul and let me weave thee
Into my rhymes. O stand still, why quiver?
Into the hymn of this sea that rises ever
And into the strain of my heart that's mute
Yet full, I will weave thee and transmute
My inward solitude and I'll bind thee
In rhymes that beyond rhythms there ever be.
Wilt thou not live there, O dream-arrayed
Full in my rhymes, unfickle e'er, my maid?"

After this solemn invocation, the poet proceeds to the main subject of his poem. In the last poem of Mala (Garland) the poet deeply immersed in the silent music of the Himalayas, prayed to God to fill the home of his heart with His soundless great song; and here, in the opening lines of the Sea-Songs the poet says that he has laid wide his ears to hear the wonderful melody of the sea's eternal song,–

"I have laid my ears today
And heard the music of the lay
In this sunny morn O sea,
What words O! O what a tune!
My heart is full. I do commune
Yet I cannot know O sea,
What's sung in thy melody!"

The poet hears the sea's song but he can catch only the divine melody; he can neither unravel the meaning of the song that is ever being sung to its deep monotone. So he continues in the following poem:

"My heart is fill'd full with thy song;
My eyes-after the morn they long,
Sometimes thy song's magic sound
Is calm–at others is profound,
Sometimes its pathos makes me weep:
It makes me mad–it is so deep.
I do not know what roves in thy lay
My limbs shiver–shiver as they may
To the tune of thy endless, endless song
I merely look towards the East for long."

In these lines we see that the poet, in his ecstasy, feels that something or someone is moving in the midst of the lay of the sea-bard. It is now that we should pay particular attention to the poet's meaning underlying these sea-songs of his.

In Vaishnavite literature which is as early as the Mahabharata, if not earlier, we come across the idea of Sri Krishna–the great hero of the Mahabharata period who has always been looked upon as God Himself,–not merely as an incarnation of God,-‘Krishnastu bhagavan swayam’ (Krishna is God Himself). He is the divine flute-player of Brindavan–Who plays His flute eternally and calls to Himself the souls of all His created beings. But He is not merely a cow-boy of a particular period of India's history. What He is in essence and what He is to His devotees were long ago revealed by Himself to the poet philosopher of the Mahabharata. Readers, especially foreign readers, have only to study the well-known Gita, the Lord's Song, to know what Sri Krishna, stands for. He is the modern European philosopher's God Immanent as well as Transcendent. The created world is only a part of Himself. The next thing to be borne in mind is that the Vaishnava poet who was deeply read in Vaishnavite literature, has, from the beginning, looked upon the sea as a devotee of Sri Krishna–who like a true devotee has been singing the praises of God from the beginning of the world. Prahlad, one of the most famous of the devotees of Sri Krishna, has given the first and second places to the hearing and the singing of the praises of God while enumerating the nine aspects of devotion to God. That the sea is such a devotee is evident from more than one of these sea-songs. The following is a quotation from Sri Aurobindo Ghose's famous rendering of the thirty-sixth sea-song of Mr. Das:

"In prayer and devotion today the very skies
Are full of blossoming flowers,
Thy two eyes swim in heavenwardness
And in waves of melting kindness
Thy waters dancing softly flow.
The roll of kirtan sweeps over the world
And the world is fill'd with the deep music of devotion,
Haribole! Haribole! the kartal clash,
And mridanga never sounded so deep in my heart before.
In this joyous kirtan the free morning air
Is dancing round and round my heart
In the wild ecstasy of divine madness,
My heart is mad for God!
With what sweet yearning of love hast thou fill’d its depth!
O Joy of heart, O enveloping restful heart of joy!
In the eagerness of reaching thee,
In the anxiety of failing,
I sink and sink,
And rising float and float again!
O devotee, O heart full of prayerfulness!
Sing thy kirtan anew.
Keep me with thee for ever in thy prayers and devotion."

Such is Krishna and such is His devotee! In the twenty-first poem the sky itself with its ‘music of the spheres’ has been imagined as another devotee of God; and here, the whole world has joined the sea in a great morning thanksgiving ceremony. Those who are believers in God bereft of all attributes, will demur to the idea of God with a name and with attributes. But the poet-philosopher of the Mahabharata has sung thus of such believers in the divine Gita: "The difficulty of those whose minds are concentrated on the unutterable or inexpressible is greater, for the path of the unmanifested is hard for the embodied to attain." (Ch. 12.5.). Probably this is why Mr. Das, though born of Brahmo parents and a Brahmo himself, became a Vaishnava at heart. In these exquisite sea-songs of his, Mr. Das looks upon the sea as a brother-devotee of God; and his song with its various moods, touches the heart of the poet with joy, sorrow and fear, and even with a feeling of separation from God. In the third song the poet feels that the sea-song floats like a bird in the sky of his heart. In the fourth song the poet feels so enraptured that he experiences a transformation of the twin feelings of joy and sorrow simultaneously. In the fifth song the poet feels that his heart has become a myriad-stringed musical instrument at the touch of the hands of the sea. In the next song we see the dawn has come, and with it an all-pervading silence. The poet enraptured asks the eternal musician where its song is sung, in what world, unseen and imperceptible–in what dawn.

In the seventh song the poet says that he is quite inexperienced as a musician, that his soul is an open sky filled with the shadow of eternity–and that he can have a hearing of God's call in its songs. It is therefore that he has opened the doors of his heart, and seeks his own self–in the song of the sea. In the next song the poet conceives of himself as an instrument to be played on by the sea who is the instrumentalist; the poet beseeches the sea to play on his heart in light and in darkness, in morning and in evening and at all times. In the next three songs the poet feels that the sea has opened his inner eyes, has with its song helped his bud-like heart to open its petals; the whole of his being blows transfigured like a flower before him; it is the song of the sea that has inwoven in a single thread of song his innumerable prior births. The poet dives deep into the sea of song which is infinite but cannot unfathom it; his heart-lotus opens its petals silently from out of the bosom of the shoreless ocean of song. He asks the sea to make him blind to everything else in this world–because he would prefer to live immersed in the sea of sounds; nothing else will abide in the world for him; the whole of the world will vibrate in the harmony of melody and song.

In the twelfth song we find the poet listening to the song of the sea on a full-moon night. The peaceful ray of the moon inter-penetrates the heart of the sea and is refulgent on its bosom. The poet is wafted to dream-land–his heart is brightened by a hundred memories–memories of happiness and sorrow–all of his past lives; the poet thinks that the memories of past lives also are being reflected on the soul of the sea; all the births of the poet have become like a single flower and float in his vision like one indivisible whole.

In the next six songs, the sea appears in a different aspect to the poet–the aspect in which it appeared to Wordsworth in "Nature and the Poet." The day dawns with a cloudy sky, the sea howls, the poet is dubious at heart and cannot understand the reason of all this ‘storm and stress’: the solemn music of the sea's mighty song booms also in the heart of the poet: he is not afraid therefore but bares his bosom and is ready to float or be plunged into the sea of darkness, dissolution and death.

Songs fifteen, sixteen and seventeen portray one of the grandest and greatest sea-storms in the world's literature. The absorption of the world in the sea of dissolution (pralaya) appears to the poet to be imminent: he feels the mighty effect of the sea-storm in his heart of hearts; he welcomes the sea therefore to enter his heart in the form of death and reign there supreme for the day. In the next song the poet implores the sea which he apostrophizes as the god of Death to recoil from its threatening attitude and let life and the world live their own lives: he asks the sea to let Creation to continue in the midst of its weal and woe. But in the midst of all the storm the sea has–so it appears to the poet–fought with him to gain his heart. The poet who was ready to give himself up into the hands of the sea, says to the sea that it is therefore of no avail to fight for his heart.

In the next two songs, from out the grey of the morning the following day of peace and of calm dawns gloriously; the poet feels that the sea has its lord again enthroned in its inmost soul. The flute of dissolution is silenced; in the golden rays of the sun the sea looks like a king; the poet's own heart is gilded with gold; he has brought to the sea his heart filled with the glow of dawn to leave it as a wreath at the feet of the sea. The poet says that both of them will remain intermingled in a single thread of union in the lap of the dawn goddess in the wildernesses of the land of dreams.

Dawn passes on and a sense of loneliness and pathos steals over the poet's heart. The whole world with its sky and clouds, its winds and waters all appear to sing mournfully: the poet is greatly troubled at heart. In the radiant glare of the meridian sun everything is calm and quiet and the poet feels that the sea, greatly tired with singing, is experiencing the propensity to sleep: and he asks it to sleep in peace, while he himself awaits in silence for it to wake up and stretch its arms for him in the midst of the darkness of evening.

In the next poem the poet reverts to the Hindu idea of the transmigration of souls; the sea is his age-long friend from the beginning of Creation; it had its previous birth–and had probably been his friend through them. The poet thinks that it is therefore that each has come to know the other more intimately now, and in some secret love-tryst they will renew their, old love for each other.

The following morning has not yet broken and the poet wakes up before anybody; he is willing to bathe in the majesty of the sea's soul, and to hear the same song that day and night reigns in its inmost heart. The poet in his ecstasy feels that the sea is looking with calm and beautiful eyes towards his face; and his own words and his song have become hushed in the midst of the twilight. He thinks himself to be as a younger brother of the sea; and as such, prays to it to regale his heart with the inward music of its soul.

The very next moment the poet feels that hundreds of dream-decked songs from his heart are being entwined on the neck of the sea by the sun's rays which fall with their sedate glory on the lips of the sea. He implores the sea to sing but one song to him so that he can sing ever to the world. But he is not alone; and therefore he exhorts the sea to reserve the song for more solitary moments. When in the midst of enveloping darkness they will meet each other, the nectareous touch of the sea will fill his own heart with the nectar of its heart.

In the next song the poet feels that all the restlessness of the sea and its mournful monotone are due to a sense of separation from ‘God-Who is our home.’ The sea appears to him to be a sea of tears, and the poet sings that he has left everything for it, and will so come through the eternal ring of ages and births. In the twenty-ninth song, therefore, the poet asks the sea when and where they were united for ever–twined in the silken bond of love and affection. He feels that both of them have come like ‘trailing clouds of glory’ from a common source–the source of everything in the world; and the sea flows on towards Eternity, while the poet floats in the eternal song of the sea. In the next song the poet sings that his night has been filled with the deep music of the sea's sound; in the darkness encircled with the sea's song he cannot see the face of the dear singer, but he feels nevertheless a peculiar widening, of his heart. And in the next song the poet says that he who had all his life been a stay-at-home man, content in the midst of the little happinesses, cares and anxieties of a small home, has now given himself up to the boundless sea–at the deep call of its howling waves, as he feels an overflowing of his soul with the sea's sound.

Twilight then comes and the sound of the sea becomes mournful–and the poet asks the sea if there is any doubt that agitates the heart of the sea, if any problem remains unsolved, and whether it speaks with life and death. In the thirtieth song we find that the poet asks the sea whether its song floats on in the calm of the evening. He feels that it is the time of vespers, and that the sea is lifting like a lamp, the heart of the poet towards someone he does not know. He asks the sea to become his spiritual guide, and to initiate him into the mysteries of its sacred worship.

At the approach of evening a strain like the pathetic ‘Puravi’ overflows the bosom of the sea–and there reigns a solemn stillness–the sky is moonless and starless, and the winds are all asleep. In the midst of this ‘inviolable quietness’ the sea sits absorbed in deep meditation–speechless and calm–and steeped in the bliss of peace. While in this state, the poet feels that all Nature (Prakriti) too floats like a lotus as at the time of Creation, and Time is static as it had been before Creation began.

The following morning brings with it a scene of joyous hymnal, which will be found in the song we have quoted previously in the rendering of Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

In the thirty-seventh song the poet feels an eager yearning to be beyond the reach of this world–to be above its "bourne of Time and Place." The next song, song number thirty-eight, of which we give a rendering below, is filled with the poet's heart-felt desire to be in the other world because he hopes there to see his Pilot face to face:

"Does light burn like a mystery on the shore
Which no eye has seen at dawn or at twilight?
Does music sound there–does it sound evermore
That's unheard of all in day-time or at night?
Does anyone sit there on soft sea-sand
Yearning like me for an embrace that's whole?
Is there seen thy heart's own self on that strand–
Boundless and peerless–the dream of thy soul?
O thou great sprite, I am dying for thirst:
I am very thirsty in my inmost soul:
Drown me in thy waters with a burst
Float me to that shore where thyself dost roll!
Will then be fulfilled my heart's sweet dream?
This lovely heart like a sovereign's seem?"

In the last song of all we find the poet weary of his numerous births and deaths. He begs of his Lord, as in ‘Prayer,’ ‘Song’ and ‘Silence’, the three poems that close his Mala (Garland), to set him free from this life of births and deaths–and to have him returned to His own Self. This is sombre with a grandeur all its own and is tenderly pathetic as will appear from the following rendering of it:

"I'm tired of this crossing from shore to shore:
Take me to thy shoreless sea for e'ermore.
My soul is adrift–it doth find no beach–
Thy beachless sea it doth yearn to reach!
A deep darkness doth enshroud me all around
I cannot hear in my heart any sound!
My eyes are tearless–they inly weep:
My soul is maddened for thy soul's great deep!
I've sought Thee in the midst of many waves,
In those places which Thy sweet music laves!
And, in Thy mysterious light and shade
Each day and night I have my search made!
O my life-long Friend! O my Pilot true,
Take me to thy shoreless sea without rue!²

Thus ends the Sea-Songs of C. R. Das. In these we find evident a blending of the physical and the spiritual, a commingling together of the personal as well as the impersonal, as in at least one of his own three sea-songs in his first book of poems, Malancha(The Bower). These are unique of their kind in all literature. The poet of these songs, as mentioned afore, was a devout Vaishnava with a peculiar fondness for the songs of the great Vaishnava and Sakta lyricists of Bengal, which are wholly free from any extraneous influences of thoughts and ideas and which are actually sung to this day. Almost all his poems and especially his collection of poems called Antarjami and the last five poems of Mala are imbued with the ideas of the Vaishnava poets. The poet in more than one article like ‘The Lyrical Poetry of Bengal’ and ‘On Transformation,’ upheld the work of the above-mentioned poets as containing the quintessence of the life of Bengali lyrical poetry. This, of course, is going too far: for such a view-point seeks to eliminate all other kinds of Bengali lyrics from the category of the very best Bengali lyrical poetry. Yet, in order to understand these sea-songs we have to bear in mind the following notes:

1. God, as He says in the Gita, pervades the whole of the created universe with a part of His own Being.

2. The knowledge of God brings with it its own dower of bliss–this bliss is no other than the joy of impersonality—it is the joy of the spirit. This knowledge also ushers in a greater triple delight in the heart of the God-knower. It opens before the inner eye of the devotee the threshold of the bliss of the Transcendent: it releases his soul in the limitless delight of the Universal Person: it reveals to him also the joy of the One Nature. This joy in the individual is a portion of the joy of the Impersonal.

3. When the individual turns towards God, all fundamental pairs of opposites like ‘Sat’ and ‘Asat’ (Reality and Unreality), ‘Sukh’ and ‘Dukh’ (Happiness and Unhappiness) disappear from the mind of the individual.

4. God says in the Gita: "Of all waters I am the Sea." Therefore it is that the poet of the Sea-Songs looks upon the sea not only as an individual in whom the spirit of God is interfused, but also as a person, a devout Vaishnava, and as such a devotee of God.

5. Like the devotees of God, the sea also worships Him, meditates on Him, and sings His praises eternally. The sea calls God by His sweetest and most beautiful of names–‘Hari,’ and this it does without intermission. This act of devotion is by itself equal to all the other acts of a devotee. The Vaishnava believes in the efficacy of ‘Nama-sankirtan’ (singing the praises of God), so much so that he thinks and knows that only this can release a being from bondage of sins and ‘maya’. Some have called ‘Sankirtanam,’ ‘Vidya-vadhu-jivanam’–the life that enlivens all knowledge personified as a bride; others have said that it is ‘Anandam-budhi-vardhanam’–that which like the moon makes the sea of joy overflow its banks; while others have even said that the utterance of each letter of such a name of God as ‘Hari’ helps us to enjoy the ecstasy which is in the Godhead.

6. Such a devotee is an object of veneration to a Vaishnava, as such a devotee is very dear to the heart of God. Says Sri Krishna in the Srimat Bhagavat: "I and my devotee are one and not to be differentiated." The sea is such a devotee; and as such is very dear to the heart of the poet; for he believes with Sri Rup Goswami: "He who takes the name of Krishna on his lips should be liked by every Vaishnava. If that man has been properly initiated one should bow down to him. If he has gone a long way in the path of meditation one should be devoted to him. If he has in him deeply God-engrossed love and has no desire to calumniate others, one should always seek his company." Because the sea is endowed with all the virtues of a devout Vaishnava, the poet exhorts the sea to initiate him into the mysteries of God- knowledge, and God-love, and seeks his company throughout eternity.

7. God has said in the Gita: "Merge thy mind in Me, Be thou My devotee, Sacrifice thou to Me, Bow thou down to Me, and verily thou shalt come even unto Me."- XVIII, 65. "Take thou shelter in Him in every way: by His grace alone thou shalt attain to supreme peace, and the place that is eternal."–XVIII, 62. "Verily they who abandon all actions in me, and always intent on Me, worship and meditate on Me whole-heartedly, them in no time I lift up from the seas of death and existence."–XII 6, 7.

So it is that the devout poet prays to God to release him from the bondage of births and deaths (the two shores of being,–life and death), and from the enwrapping veil of ‘maya’ (Unreality), and to take him from all the pairs of fundamental opposites to Himself where He is the Eternal, the Immutable, the Subtle, and the Indiscernible.

8. In the ‘Chhandyogya Upanishad’ (7-6) the poet-sage has declared that the earth, the ocean, the sky and all things in heaven and earth, and Gods, and even the whole world are always rapt in the meditation of God.

9. Sri Krishna or Sri Hari is to the Vaishnava not the cow-boy of Brindavan though He is sometimes regarded as such, but the Brahma of the sages, the ‘paramatma’ or ‘Oversoul’ of the Yogis, and the ‘Bhagavan’ or God of the devotees.

These are the things that one has to bear in mind while reading the Sea-Songs of C. R. Das. C. R. Das was a real poet, and there is much to say about his poetry; and the crown of all his poetical efforts is his Sea-Songs, which will ever delight the lover of poetry, the Vaishnava devotee, and all those liberated souls of the world who are ever striving towards a realisation of God in their own selves.

1 All renderings of C. R. Das’s sea-songs used in this article, unless otherwise indicated, are mine. These have been done very faithfully to the original forms.

2 Curiously enough there is a similar conception of birth and death as a sea in the following lines of Goethe's Faust:

"In the tides of Life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free
Birth and the grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowing." (Sc. 1. Bayard Taylor's Translation)
In the Kathopanishad we read of
"The Eternal One, the Place of Peace, the Abode
Where fear and grief are fled: the Landing Port
For spirits which have crossed Life's troubled sea."

‘The Secret of Death’-Sir Edwin Arnold.