An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/1914
RUDOLF MEDEK
(b. 1890)
1914
Nor durst it forget!
Never will my eyes forget this.
Summer’s hapless decline trails heavy shadows along the earth,
Sadness has its seat in your house,
But more bitter and more mournful was the evening then,
When amid the mocking clamour of military music my brothers in rank and file
Passed through the town.
Their tear-dimmed eyes uttered a curse upon all that befell,
A smothered lament trembled upon their young lips,
Where you beheld dawn of despair and flash of vain revolt,—
Austrian troops!
Old Hussite town,
Never yet had you heard,
You old houses,
You old square with the red cathedral,
A more mocking music.
With seething heart and maimed pride,—
I who never before in days of direst anguish
Had shed a single tear of distress,
Now departed into a gloomy and deserted street,
And wept.
All the evil fate, all the wrath and the penalty,
The unbounded abasement of my nation.
But I behold a cloud hovers above this land of ours,
Earth is plunging into a dreadful twilight,
The day wanes apace.
More despair than even the White Mountain,
More pangs than all the graveyards in our annals,
As did that day in late September.
When with quavering voices you sang the Emperor’s hymn,
When in each “farewell” I heard the dark,
Curse-beset, fateful question “Wherefore?”
When you were moving off and the eyes of all within view
Brimmed with silent tears,
Then suddenly amid the darkness of night it was as if someone stood beside me,
Whom long I had known, but who long had been mute,
And softly said to me:
Fear not, O my son of little faith,
Only he dies who has believed not enough in life,
In life which is boundless, an unending and victorious advance,
Unending and beautiful and righteous.
Lionheart (1919)
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1940, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 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.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 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 |
