Tab Article

Translated by: Kenneth R. MacKenzie, Bilingual edition

Here is Poland's greatest epic poem in its finest translation, describing country life among the Polish and Lithuanian gentry in the years 1811-1812.
The plot has typical elements of a romantic, historical novel. The original Polish is accompanied by side-by-side English translation.

Pan Tadeusz - Chapter I
The Farm

Argument
The return of the young master -- A first meeting in a little room, a second at table -- The Judge's weighty lecture on courtesy -- The Chamberlain's political observations on fashions -- Beginning of the quarrel about Bobtail and Falcon -- Lamentations of the Seneschal -- The last Court Apparitor -- Glance at the political condition of Lithuania and Europe at this time.

O Lithuania, my country, thou Art like good health; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see
The beauty whole, because I yearn for thee.

O Holy Maid, who Czestochowa's shrine Dost guard and on the Pointed Gateway shine
And watchest Nowogrodek's pinnacle! As Thou didst heal me by a miracle (For when my weeping mother sought Thy power,
I raised my dying eyes, and in that hour My strength returned, and to Thy shrine I trod
For life restored to offer thanks to God),
So by a miracle Thou 'lt bring us home. Meanwhile, bear off my yearning soul to roam
Those little wooded hills, those fields beside
The azure Niemen, spreading green and wide,
The vari-painted cornfields like a quilt,
The silver of the rye, the whetfields' gilt;
Where amber trefoil, buck-wheat white as snow,
And clover with her maiden blushes grow, And all is girdled with a grassy band Of green, whereon the silent peear trees stand.

Such were the fields where once beside a rill
Among the birch trees beside a hill There stood a manor house, wood-built on stone;
From far away the walls with whitewash shoe,
The whiter as relieved by the dark green Of poplars, that the autumn winds would screen.
It was not large, but neat in every way, And had a mighty barn; three stacks of hay
Stood near it, that the thatch could not contain;
The neighbourhood was clearly rich in grain;
And from the stooks that every cornfield filled
As thick as stars, and from the ploughs that tilled
The black earthed fields of fallow, broad and long,
Which surely to the manor must belong, Like well-kept flower beds -- everyone could tell
That plenty in that house and order dwell.
The gate wide open to the world declared A hospitable house to all who fared.