A very strange being indeed is the Magyar peasant, mysterious as his country’s history; he has sympathy with gloom and melancholy reveries, and is fond of brooding in a seeming lethargy when his heart is ready to kindle with all the fire of a crusader. When free from his daily labour, in his happiest moments, he is marked by sudden transitions. Apparently happy, he quickly becomes sad, soon to burst forth into exultation, only to plunge again into grief, which always marks the end of his frolicsome episodes. He is not easy to cheer by incitements which put heart into other people, for he does not readily respond to this sort of thing. There is a saying that the “Hungarian enjoys life with weeping eyes,” just as the Britishers are supposed to take their pleasures sadly, and it is true that a vein of melancholy runs through the folk-songs and ballads of Hungary. The gipsy who wants to rouse the Hungarian peasant has to begin plaintively and rise into gaiety if he wishes to catch his attention.
As is perhaps natural considering that his life was passed fighting for his country’s nationality, Petöfi’s poems strike mostly a wailing note such as:
A cloud o’er my country there hangs,
That tells of a storm approaching;
My soul in foreboding its pangs
Gains strength to resist its encroaching.
The harp of my fingers is weary,
Too long have I struck it with pain;
Well knows it my heart has been dreary,
In wearing its strings out in vain.