In Sophie’s Diary (1866)
by Juliusz Słowacki, translated by Jarek Zawadzki
1500042In Sophie’s DiaryJarek ZawadzkiJuliusz Słowacki


For poems, Sophie, ask me not, I pray.
When thou art back in Poland’s merry clime,
A flower will sing a song for thee each day,
A star at night will make for thee a rhyme.
Before the flower may die, before the star may fall,
Listen! They are the finest poets of them all.

The stars so blue, the flowers so lovely red
Whole epics, Sophie, will compose for thee.
Know that what they will say, I might have said,
For they have sown the grains of words in me.
And where the silver waves of Ikwa flow so mild,
I used to be, just like Sophia, once, a child.

Now I have left to roam in lands so far,
A winding path is now my only bower.
Oh bring to me some brightness of that star!
Oh bring to me some fragrance of that flower!
I need rejuvenation, so come back to me
From Poland as if from the skies. I wait for thee.

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

Original:

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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Translation:

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed—and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license as this one.

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