The Greek set shining, columned marble here.
The Latin put the Mongol horde to flight,
And Mussulmans prayed eastward morn and night.
The owl and vulture of dark wing and drear
Are fluttering like black banners overhead
In cities where the pest piles high the dead.
ON JUDA'S CLIFF
On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that battling beat and break with might,
While farther seaward in a bland delight,
I see them shining where a rainbow shook.
On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that like sea-armies swing to sight,
To send upon the shore their billows white,
And, ebbing, to leave pearls in every nook.
Thus, Poet, in your youth when storms are wild
And passions break upon the heart and brain,
To leave their ruin there—shipwreck and waste—
Pick up your lute! Upon it undefiled
You'll find song-pearls that your heart-deeps retain,
The crown the years have brought you, white and chaste.
Here, then, end the Crimean Sonnets of the immortal hero of Polish poetry, Adam Mickiezvicz as translated by Edna Worthley Underwood and published by Paul Elder and Company at their Tomoye Press, in the city of San Francisco, under the direction of Ricardo J. Orozco, their printer during the month of August, nineteen seventeen