Mihály Csokonai: TO HOPE

Bright apparition, born of mist

In heaven’s dome aloft,

Thou hast our tortured foreheads kissed

With laughing mouth so oft

That we,

Deceived and blinded, give our lives to thee.

And we, as to an angel guide,

Before thee ever bend;

Still dost thou near us softly glide

In likeness of a friend,

Until

We learn that thou art false and fickle still.

Why with smooth lips didst thou beguile

My trusting heart, and why

Didst thou betray me with a smile

And lure me with a lie?

Alas!

I did believe thy promise soothfast was.

My garden thou didst brightly spread

With pale narcissus sweet,

A merry brook my saplings fed,

Flowers laughed around my feet:

Spring came,

Crowned with a thousand buds and winged with

flame.

And every morn my thoughts took wing

As ’twere a nimble bee,

Untom y roses fluttering

With new felicity.

And yet

I still had food for longing and regret.

The love of Lilla* did I crave,

The crown of all my hope,

And heaven that treasure to me gave:

A golden dream did ope

And gild

The future with sweet promise unfulfilled.

My fragnant roses all are dead,

My rippling rills run dry,

My lusty trees their leaves have shed,

And sombre is the sky.

Ah, me!

The good old world no more will merry be.

Buti f, O harsh and ruthless fate,

My Lilla thou hadst left,

My song would still speak gladness great:

Though of all else bereft

With her

Sorrow could ne’er my hopeful spirit blur.

No cares had darkened the clear sky

Nor veiled the sinking sun

If she I worship had been nigh

But I am left alone

Eheu!

With her all riches callous would I view.

Since she is gone, Hope cannot stay,

For I in shadow dwell.

For liberty I long alway

And for the solemn bell

That will

Proclaim my freedom when my heart is still.

No blossoms dance along the mead,

The voiceful grove is dumb,

The phantoms of the world recede,

As death’s dark heralds come.

To you,

Visions of vanished Hope, I bid adieu.

*The poet’s beloved, who was forced by her parents to wed another.

MIHÁLY CSOKONAI (1773-1805), was the son of a surgeon, and born at Debreczen. Having early lost his father, he received the rudiments of his education from his cultured mother, and began to write poetry while still at scholl. He soon abandoned his studies, however, in order to seek at Pozsony, where Parliament was then sitting, a moble patron who might encourage his literary aspirations. This quest proved fruitless. On his homeward journey he met Julia Vajda, the „Lilla” of his famous love-songs, but she was compelled by her parents to desert the hapless poet and marry another. Ranging from comic narrative to the deepest philosophic speculations, the works of Csokonai are varied and original; buti t is by his love-songs and drinking-songs that he is best known.

Forrás: MAGYAR POEMS. SELECTED AND TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. BY NORA DE VÁLLYI AND DOROTHY M. STUART. – LONDON, E. MARLBOROUGH AND CO., 1911.