Arany János - Győrei Zsolt (szerk.): The trill of the nightingale (Budapest, 2019)
II - „dead bark burning in a hole” - In Autumn (George Szirtes)
Sweet summer s gone, it fades and falls - Nature goes crawling to her death. No more delights, no miracles, The thunder fails, wind loses hreath. No nightingales, the swallow’s fled, No song, no mirage left to fight, I call on Ossian to shed His faint, fogged notes across the night. A uniform monotony; The dawn is but a lighter eve, No blue sky, no green shrubbery, Heaven has nothing up its sleeve, The sky will weep itself to bed In slow dull tears none may requite. I call on Ossian to shed His faint, fogged notes across the night. Oh come, amuse me, you who sing The dying flame of glory, come. My soul longs for the distant ring Of clouded sky and muffled drum, The fading wreath for those who bled, The last the enemy could smite, I call on Ossian to shed His faint, fogged notes across the night. The clouds, the moaning winds, the brakes Soft bristling, the long grass, the moor, The lonely oak that longs and aches, The wandering fires, the sea’s vague roar, On such my hungry soul has fed, Such feed my nation in her plight, I call on Ossian to shed His faint, fogged notes across the night. The dead who in the dark have gone To join heroic ancestors, The souls of warriors, one by one, Fall through the clouds like meteors And call on thee: Why wake the dead? Can Ossian’s blazing song ignite cold fires, the long untenanted camps of the Caledonian night?
