European Elegies/Spring/By the grave of the countess Potocka
74.BY THE GRAVE OF THE COUNTESS POTOCKA
In pleasant gardens in the land of spring
You died, sweet rose! For memories of the past
Into your pure, soft-petalled bosom cast
The maggot of nostalgic suffering.
You died, sweet rose! For memories of the past
Into your pure, soft-petalled bosom cast
The maggot of nostalgic suffering.
Thick through the northern sky a myriad stars
Mark a bright highway to the land you loved;
Ah, did your homesick eyes, that thither roved,
Burn that high path as you escaped life's bars ?
Mark a bright highway to the land you loved;
Ah, did your homesick eyes, that thither roved,
Burn that high path as you escaped life's bars ?
I, too, am fated to an exile's end.
Strangers will lay me here in alien earth.
But when some wandering poet shall attend
Strangers will lay me here in alien earth.
But when some wandering poet shall attend
Your grave with tribute in the tongue of home,
Dreaming some lonely lyric into birth,
My dust will wake and call to you to come.
Dreaming some lonely lyric into birth,
My dust will wake and call to you to come.
From the Polish of Adam Mickiewicz.