The Soul Of A Century/The scars of life

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3723071The Soul Of A Century — The scars of life1943Jan Neruda

THE SCARS OF LIFE
(Graveyard Blossoms)

VIII.

Before me lies a skull white-bleached and furrowed
My eyes try hard to count each ridge of strife
While in my mind, from out these convolutions,
I weave a living picture of past life.

Love carved this furrow; envy cut this groove;
This one meant bliss; ill fortune that one wrought;
And these few shorter, straighter running furrows
Are they not the paths of some former thought?

As my memory records this deathly picture,
Thus the mind endows the skull with signs.
If in your life you thought but less, old fellow,
How much smoother could have been these lines!

 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 legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) between 1929 and 1977 (inclusive) without a copyright notice.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1987, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 36 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