Sonnets from the Crimea |
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Common terms and phrases
abyss Adam Mickiewicz Allah ALUSHTA ancient snow BAKTSCHI SERAI Beneath BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH blue Heaven bright bril Cliff I love Cossacks Count Henry Rzewuski crest CRIMEA By ADAM Crimean Sonnets crown deeps concealed delight dreams drear Edna Worthley Underwood Elder and Company Europe exile flight furled Goethe grave harem heart hero of Polish I-not inspiration Juda's Cliff Krasinski land Latin lean and look liant Lithuania look On waves love to lean lute marble Memories of Pan Mickie Mickiewicz was born Mirza mountain Mussulman night Novogrodek o'er Pan Severin Soplica Paris patriot Paul Elder period Pilgrim poets Polish poetry Polish Rose Pray Puschkin race ruin Russia and Poland San Francisco shining Slav Slavic sleep Slowacki sonnet form southern Russia spurs stars STEPPE storms are wild sweep TRANSLATED BY EDNA Tschatir Dagh Turkish wars twilight undefiled UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN unto veiled Vilna Watch white cloud wings youth
Popular passages
Page vii - Three years before, the third and last partition of his native land had taken place, and the signed documents had been hastened to Petersburg to make triumphant the birthday of the Great Catherine. Just a few years before this (1792), Kosciusko had courageously led his forty-five thousand valiant Poles in their brave defiance of an overwhelming number of Cossacks and Russians. History had recorded the bloody Turkish wars, the Pugatshev Rebellion, the uprising of the Zaporogian Cossacks, and the Polish...
Page 31 - Oh, thankless Crimean land! in ruin laid Are now the castles that were once your pride! Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide, And robbers arm them for the nightly raid. Upon the lettered marble boasts are made, Brave words on battered arms in gold descried, And broken splendor years have scattered wide, Beside the dead who made them are arrayed. The Greek set shining, columned marble here.
Page 9 - Then black as crêpe from crested columns falls. Within the burnished banquet room there sings The fountain of the harem pure and clear, Just as of old it sang in twilights drear. But whither love and fame speed — on what wings? When all things else must perish these endure! Yet both are gone! The fountain ripples pure.
Page 7 - Up there I've journeyed where the winter reigns, And seen the rivers bitten black like lines On Tschatir Dagh, where the white cloud reclines, Which not the wildest eagle's shadow stains, Where cradled under me the thunders sleep And Allah and the stars their watches keep.
Page 7 - What would Great Allah with the frozen sea? Would he of icy clouds a throne carve bright,^' Or would the demons of the deepest night ^A bar build where the shining stars sweep free? It gleams like pagan cities fired, kings flee.
Page 27 - And check y our thoughts' free flight, too, while you go; Let all of Fancy' s fluttering sails be furled Here where Death watches o'er the riven world. (Pilgrim) I lived to cross the bridge of ancient snow! But what I saw my tongue no more can tell, The angels only could rehearse that well.
Page ix - Great, with its wild dreams of world dominance and of the glorious revival of perished Greece, had just been unrolled for the amazement of Europe. What dramatic and enchanting memories the names of her followers call up: the Orlows, Potemkin, Panin, Poniatowski, BestushewRjumin, Princess Daschkov, Razumowski. In France, too, the...
Page xv - ... as much fame as his poetry. His life ended in a period as dramatic as that in which it began. He entered the 'Turkish wars in 1855 and died in Stamboul in that same year...
Page ix - Goethe was at the height of his power and the intellectual dictator of Europe. Under his direction and encouragement the treasures of oriental literature were being translated and made known to the West. This is merely a hasty glimpse of the
Page xi - Krasinski (1812}, the three greatest poets of Poland excepting only Mickiewicz himself; the Polish critic, Brodzinski. In Russia, the golden age of literature almost covered the same period as Mickiewicz's own life — Puschkin, Lermontov, Schukowski, Gogol, to mention only some of the most important names.