Who your golden age are smirching with their prose, their filthy pools,
Bassarabs, Mushats[1], in holy shadows stay, you noble race,
Settlers of the land and givers of new laws, you who did trace
With the spade and plough new frontiers for a country large and free,
Far extending from the mountains to the Danube and the sea.
Is not great our present? Does not all that one can wish abound?
In our throng is there not any precious jewel to be found?
Is not here the Sybaritic temple of false glories, none
But are offsprings of the taverns, reputations cheaply won!
See we not the fighting heroes, who with rhetor’s lances meet,
Thus exciting the loud plaudits of the rabble in the street?
Dancers on the rope, impostors, jugglers, rivals for the prize,
Famous masquerading actors in the comedy of lies.
Does the liberal not always speak of virtue, country-love?
One would think his life is crystal, like the purest sky above.
You would not think that before you is a coffee-house supporter,
Who at his own words is laughing, a mere ape, a word distorter.
See that soulless, heartless being, with big jaws, and swollen face,
Monster in whom all the vices find the fittest meeting place,
Swarthy, hunchbacked, greedy, wily, he with all the ruffians leagues,
And imparts to his low fellows all his venomous intrigues.
On their lips is always virtue, but their souls are hollow shells,
Worthlessness in these mere nothings, void from top to bottom, dwells.
Mustering his army’s numbers, eagerly and well pleased spies
Over all that hideous monster with his swollen, frog-like eyes.
Such are those whom our land choosing representatives must call,
Men who fitly would be gathered all behind some bedlam’s wall,
In long shirt and with a fool’s cap; these assemble now and thus,
Making laws and fixing taxes, they our public weal discuss.
Patriots and pious founders of establishments like those
Where in words, in deeds, in gestures lewdness, only lewdness shows.
They in parliament assemble, sit admiring there each other’s
Thick, stiff necks or long, thin noses, all these Greek, Bulgarian brothers.
Heirs of the great Roman empire are they alil, and everyone
Of his ancestors is boasting, being Trajan’s great grandson!
And this mob, this scum, this vermin, this our country’s desolation,
- ↑ Bassarab and Mushat: the names of the two ruling families of Wallachia and Moldavia.
