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Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth: [How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!]

Portre of Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

[How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!] (English)

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!*
  This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
  Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
  Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
 
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
  But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
  Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
  And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
 
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
  What exultations trampling on despair,
  What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
 
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
  Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
  This mediaeval miracle of song!
 
 
*Six Sonnets on Dante's Divine Comedy -2.



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationhttp://www.infoplease.com

[A tornyokon mily furcsa szobrok éke!] (Hungarian)

A tornyokon mily furcsa szobrok éke!*
Zsúfolt csoportjuk ujjredőibe
madár fészkelt és lombokkal tele
a kapubolt, mint lugas szövedéke.
 
Virágkeresztként nő a dóm az égre.
De ördög, sárkány vízköpő csöve
új tolvajok közt holt Krisztus fele,
s az áruló, gonosz Judásra néz le.
 
Ó! szív és elme közt mily vad tusák,
mily gyöngédség, mi könny, mi gyűlölet,
mily kétségekre tipró diadal,
 
mi zord jajszó a fájó keblen át -
adta, hogy ég-föld költeménye lett,
középkori csodává lett e dal!
 
 
*Divina Commedia – 2.



Uploaded byP. T.
Source of the quotationF. A.

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