Venice masks

Friday, 22 December 2023

My native land - Lydia Koidula

My native land they buried you 
Beneath an ebon cover, 
And blooms of blood on wounded soil 
Were all they could discover. 
You struggled in the fettered yoke 
And quiet grew with sighing, 
And fell at last into a sleep 
The slumber of the dying. 

Six hundred years had passed алуау 
And still you lingered sleeping, 
But there was a story secret, strange, 
Among your people creeping. 
How once the people had been free. 
The brave Estonian nation, 
How on a soil that was their own, 
They built their habitation.

Lydia Koidula [Lydia Emilie Florentine Jannsen] (1843 - 1886) Estonia
Translated by Ernest Howard Harris
Source: Literature in Estonia, E. Howard Harris, Boreas Publishing Co. Ltd., 1943

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please keep your comments relevant and free from abusive language. Thank you. Note that comments are moderated so it may be a day or two before your comment is posted - irrelevant or abusive comments will not be published.