The Poems of Petöfi [pp. 427-430]

THE POEMS OF PETbF4.
As also in this one on "Solrrow and Joy:"
"And what is sorrow? "1' is a boundless sea.
And what is joy?
A little pearl in that deep ocean's bed
I sought it, found it, held it o'er my head;
And, to my soul's annoy,
It fell into the ocean's depth again,
And now I look and long for it in vain."
But does not hope beamt beautifully
out of the sadness, through these lines
ol "Friendship?"
"Friends came, false friends, and left me as they
came;
As they came, let them go, in God's own name I
As leaves they fell from the abandoned tree,
That leafless tree my heart,-so let it be!
But though the cold winds blow those leaves away,
A future Spring will herald a bright day,
And heaven be gladdened when the earth is glad.
But when the old branches with the new leaves are
clad,
Of the fallen leaves-ye false ones I be it knownNone shall grow green again, not even one."
As to how fair this hope of a "ftilture
Spring" lbecamie ultimately a Christian
experience in Pet6fi's tempest-tossed
heart we are left to conjecture. But that
he was theoretically no self-deluding optinistic, indifferent "welt-kind " of the
Wieland-Goethle class, we know positively
firom these earnest, hopeful stanzas from
his poem " Istok:"
"Despair is but hell's fearful cry,
Proclaiming in its madness,
That heaven is godless vacancy,
And earth a void of sadness.
And they who doubt the grace of God,
The great, the good Preceptor,
Shall feel the smitings of his rod
When they renounce his scepter.
For all, one Father have; for all
That Father cares; outpouring
The sunbeams glance, the raindrops fall
On the heedless as the adoring.
But patience! since for all his sons
That Father spreads a table
With bounties, blisses, benisons,
And gifts incalculable.
In patience wait! as sun and star
Break through heaven's azure curtain;
So constant all his mercies are,
But still more bright and certain.
Yes, even in this world's midnight, he
Some streaks of light hath given;
And midst our dark mortality,
Hung up a star in heaven.
And from that star a ray falls down,
As radiance fell on Eden,
Bright, all the hills with light to crown;
Sweet, oceau's depths to sweeten."
These stanzas are all the mor-e significant fioom the fact that, confessedly, every
thing from the pen of Pet6fi is a direct
expression of the changing phases of his
inmost life-experience. For hle had in
him nothing of the professional lit/erateur. He never sat down in order to
write verses. Every page, every line,
in the dozen volumes of his dramas,
tales, poets, was a leaf totrn right out of
his ardent, turbulent, patriot life. But
on no page perhaps is the intense restlessness of his cotl]tr-y-loving zeal more
faithfully reflected than in his little poem
entitled "One Only Thought," which is
also marvelously prophetic of the manner of death hle actually did die. Here
it is:
"One thought torments me sorely-'t is that r,
Pillowed on a soft bed of down may die Fade slowly, like a flower, and pass away,
Under the gentle pressure of decay,
Paling as pales a fading, flickering light
In the dark, lonesome solitude of night.
O God! let not my Magyar name
Be linked with such a death of shame;
No! rather let it be
A lightning-struck, uprooted tree;
A rock, which torn from mountain brow,
Comes rattling, thundering down below.
Where every fettered race tired with their chains,
Mtster their ranks, and seek the battle plains;
And with red flushes the red flag unfold,
The sacred signal there inscribed in gold:
'For the world's liberty I'
And, far and wide, the summons to be free,
Fills east and west,-and to the glorious fight
Heroes press forward, battling for the right,
There will I die I
There, drowned in mine own heart's blood lie,
Poured out so willingly; th' expiring voice,
Even in its own extinction shall rejoice;
While the sword's clashing, and the trumpet's
sound,
And rifles and artillery thunder round;
Then may the trampling horse
Gallop upon my corse,
When o'er the battle-field the warriors fly.
There let me rest till glorious victory
Shall crown the right,-my bones upgathered be
At the sublime interment of the free I
When million voices shout their elegy
Under the tnfurled banners waving high;
On the gigantic grave which covers all
The heroes, who for freedom fall,
And welcome death because they die for thee,
All holy! world-delivering liberty I"
Literally, then, was it that Pet6fi escaped "the gentle pressure of decay,"
and passed away as
"A lightning-struck uprooted ttee."
I876.]
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