Translation of an excerpt from the ballad Věštkyně from the cycle The Garland of National Legends.

Karel Jaromír Erben3722754The Soul Of A Century — A seeress1943Roderick Aldrich Ginsburg

A SEERESS

(Fragments)

Whenever your eye fills with a bitter tear,
Whenever hardships fall upon your days
’tis then I bring my branch of hope and cheer
’tis then I raise a prophetic voice that says:

“Do not weigh lightly the meaning of my words,
In the heavens above my prophecy finds its birth,
Unflinching laws embrace all men and worlds,
And all must pay their debts upon this earth.

A river seeks its end in the distant rolling sea,
The flames leap high, the heavens to embrace,
Whatever the earth creates by earth destroyed shall be,
But nought shall go to waste or lose its finite place.

Firm and assured is destiny’s each tread
And what shall be/ shall come as time moves on,
And what one day may bury, in its stead
Another day will bring to life anon.

 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.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) between 1929 and 1977 (inclusive) without a copyright notice.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1987, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 36 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