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Ady Endre: The lost rider (Az eltévedt lovas in English)

Portre of Ady Endre

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Az eltévedt lovas (Hungarian)

Vak ügetését hallani

Eltévedt, hajdani lovasnak,

Volt erdők és ó-nádasok

Láncolt lelkei riadoznak.

 

Hol foltokban imitt-amott

Ős sűrűből bozót rekedt meg,

Most hirtelen téli mesék

Rémei kielevenednek.

 

Itt van a sűrű, a bozót,

Itt van a régi, tompa nóta,

Mely a süket ködben lapult

Vitéz, bús nagyapáink óta.

 

Kísértetes nálunk az Ősz

S fogyatkozott számú az ember:

S a dombkerítéses sikon

Köd-gubában jár a November.

 

Erdővel, náddal pőre sík

Benőtteti hirtelen, újra

Novemberes, ködös magát

Mult századok ködébe bújva.

 

Csupa vérzés, csupa titok,

Csupa nyomások, csupa ősök,

Csupa erdők és nádasok,

Csupa hajdani eszelősök.

 

Hajdani, eltévedt utas

Vág neki új hináru utnak,

De nincsen fény, nincs lámpa-láng

És hírük sincsen a faluknak.

 

Alusznak némán a faluk,

Multat álmodván dideregve

S a köd-bozótból kirohan

Ordas, bölény s nagymérgü medve.

 

Vak ügetését hallani

Hajdani, eltévedt lovasnak,

Volt erdők és ó-nádasok

Láncolt lelkei riadoznak.

 

1918



Source of the quotationhttp://mek.oszk.hu

The lost rider (English)

Lost and ancient, the horseman rides,

Blind the trot of the horse’s feet,

Of the forest that was, of the reeds that waved

The fettered spirits start at their beat.

 

Where the trees of the silent past

Brooded still in the chequered shade,

On a sudden the shapes of a winter’s tale

Leap to life in the listening glade.

 

Here dense and solemn the forest stands,

Here the song of the years of old,

Since the days of our forefathers, fighters sad,

Lives in the deaf mist’s silent hold.

 

Spectral autumn is with us now,

Men are few, and their numbers wane,

In his cloak of eddying mist-wrack treads

Grey November the hill-girt plain.

 

Suddenly, strangely the plain anew

Clothes with rushes and woodlands green

Its limbs of November, its limbs of fog

And hides in the mist of the years that have been.

 

Only bloodshed and mystery,

Footprints ancestral in ancient ways,

Only the forest, only the reeds,

Only the madmen of vanished days.

 

Lost and ancient the traveller rides,

Through new grown brushwood upon his way,

No light shines forth, and no lamp burns,

Unseen the villages of today.

 

Villages unseen, shuddering,

Dream of the past and dumbly sleep.

From the mist and the forest, the ancient, the dark,

The wolf, the bear and the great elk leap.

 

Lost and ancient, the horseman rides,

Blind the trot of the horse’s feet,

Of the forest that was, of the reeds that waved

The fettered spirits start at their beat.



Source of the quotationHorne, J. C. W.

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