🚧Byelorussian song
Уладзімір КараткевічВедах беларускіх
Translated by
BYELORUSSIAN SONG
Where’s my land? It is where Byelovezha rustles and flowers,
And where Nieman at sundown recalls the spilt enemy blood,
Where on Novogrudskiye hills slumber stern old towers,
And the cherry-drowned huts stand gazing on Dnieper’s wide flood.
It is there, where the Pripet’s blue ribbon caressingly sweeps,
Where St. Sophia floats o’er the Dvina, a ship on the tide, Where my heart, with my very first step, like a hammer
beats,
And although deaf and blind I should find my way to her side.
More then blind — even dead I’ll recall beaming of stars
High above the red river, the flickering flight of the bats,
White sails on blue lakes, proud as seas, and the gleaming of spars,
And the oceans of pine-woods, and sky-bays of flowering flax.
Where my land? It is there where the people will never/ be slaves,
Such as bear the hard yoke for their bread without hope in view,
Where strapping young fellows grow sturdy as oaken staves, And the men hard as rocks, – you strike them, your sword breaks in two.
Where’s my land? It is there where my forebears sleep sound ‘neath the pines,
Were the women are like happy dreams in the hay, sweet and soft,
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Translated by Walter May__.
s
And the girls are like sunshine thro’ rain, and grey mothers one finds, Like the autumn harvest in cob-webs, a kind sun aloft.
And it’s where our immortal songs roll full-throatedly yet, Where from time immemorial our tongue rings like tempered steel —
Our proud language, which even that day we shall not forget,
When the sun, driving darkness from earth, last time rolls its wheel.
My dear land! You’re red pears in the sunset o’er grandfather’s garth, Phosphorescent dense host of swift-falling November stars. You’re our flag at which not a soul, not a soul upon earth We’ll let laugh, nor defile, nor forget, conquer in wars.
And we swear by the furrow, the first that we plough in the field.
And we swear by the last, when from grief we can no longer stand,
That we’ll never, No never
A single green acre yield, – That we’ll never forsake, No never forsake Our dear land!
^ШЯЯНВЫІІВЖіішПшіПіі^ ішвшішпТ
- 90
WLADZIMIR KARATKEVICH