European Elegies/Winter/Death

For works with similar titles, see Death.

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Memento mori

European Elegies (1928)

Death
by Jaroslav Vrchlický, translated by Watson Kirkconnell

To-morrow

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related portals: Czech literature

Jaroslav Vrchlický4643727European Elegies — Death1928Watson Kirkconnell

39.DEATH

Death passes no one by; all men must go.
Even from infancy he flutters nigh;
Faintly, as through thin fog, his footsteps grow;
He passes no one by.

Through his grey mask, flame flashes from each eye,
And gleaming shin-bones in the darkness glow;
His hands hold suffering and senility.

Sometimes he lays a toiling traveller low,
Smiting him, hawklike, from an open sky;
And sometimes, cat with mouse, his play is slow.
He passes no one by.

From the Czech of Jaroslav Vrchlicky.

This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1928, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1977, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 46 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse