Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse/The Greatest Joy

Svetislav Stefanović2707428Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse — The Greatest Joy1919Paul Selver

2. THE GREATEST JOY.

Can there, O soul, a joy more wondrous be,
Than, when is drawing near the hour to die,
And with the jaws of boorish death hard by,
To tell the world : All have I given thee.

'Tis only cravens fear mortality.
But I am strong, nor have a bondsman's eye:
Nay, proud as monarch o'er his realms, this cry
My lips shall utter, when no more I see.

And I shall tell to death, what in my heart
Of Hamlet's nature I became aware,
When by a swarm of sorrows I was riven:

—Naught from me hast thou power to rend apart:
For in this world my body hath no share,
And to the next my spirit has been given.

 This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1944, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 79 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

Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 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