Lithuania! My homeland! You are like vigour.
How invaluable you are, only he can figure,
Who has lost you. Today your beauty wholly I view
And seeing, describe it, because I long after you.
Holy ******, who guards Luminous Czestochowa
And shines in the Gate of Dawn! You, who watches over
Strongheld Novogrudok and its faithful populace!
As once you healed me, a child, so miraculous
(When into your care from my despondent mother bid
I lifted my already departed eyelid,
And soon could make my way on foot to your temple's door,
Having gone to offer thanks to God for a life restored),
So too you shall restore us to our homeland's womb.
Meanwhile, may you convey my soul from its longing's gloom
To those aforrested hills, those evergreen meadows,
Stretched wide across the space where the azure Neman flows;
To those vast fields, painted in varicoloured grain-dye,
A landscape gilded with wheat, silver-plated with rye,
Where the runch is amber, and the buckwheat white as snow,
Where like a maiden's blush the red clover overgrows,
And all's interwoven, as if by a ribbon, green
balk, within which a wild pear tree can sometimes be seen.
Here's my attempt at translating the Invocation from Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz from Polish into English.
