3724052The Soul Of A Century — Buttercups1943Josef Václav Sládek

BUTTERCUPS

I dearly love those rich moist meadow plains
Covered in Spring with gay buttercups of gold;
I love the winding brook with its waters cold,
And all that grows and breathes and blooms again.

I love the lapwings, as through the grass they breeze,
And the butterflies beneath the sun's carress,
The aged willow in its newly fashioned dress,
The woodpecker, as it drills the tan-barked trees.

I love to see the boys at Easter time
Distributing gay colored Easter eggs
The maiden, who serenely and sublime
Asks of the brook: “What is it my lover begs?”
Whereupon she leaps and picks a bloom in haste,
And wades to her skirts across the golden waste.

 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