ALEXANDE R PETOFI 191 for the third time. Three times he left Transylvania to return to Hungary, and three times he went back to Transylvania, where, on the third time, he met his death. The swift movement of his life certainly helped to develop his talents. But in his career of wandering and excitement there was one period of rest : four years of peace and undisturbed happiness, of love and poetic activity. That time of quiet was like the one calm point in the centre of · an ocean whirlpool. It is weil known to sailors that wh en a ship has been caught by a cyclone and whirled round, it arríves at length at a central point where all is still. It seems as though the storm h as ceased and th e waves have become gentle. The sea appears blue and smiling. But soon the currents on the other side of the wh irlpool begin to draw the ship into their clutches ; the merciless storm is renewed, and the ship is at last wrecked by the hurricane. Petőfi was horn in the central portion of the lowlands, and was brought up amid the surroundings which are so faithfully depicted in his poems. The wide plain (puszta) , the roadside inns (csárda), the fata tn orga ta, the storks and the stud-farms, were the first sights with which the child became familiar ; and the popular songs were the first poetry that he heard . And the impressions then receíved had a profound effect upon his whole life. Petőfi' s father, Stephen Petrovics, was a buteber at Aszód in the province of Pest, like his father before bim. He was a man of strong passions, of unpolished man n ers, but thoroughly good-natured and honest, and not altagether uneducated, knowing even a littie Latin . He married a young peasant girl from the province of Turóc, who probabiy only learned Hungarian after her marriage. She was a lively, amiable and tender-hearted woman, with a
