LIBERTY
Nightingale sings sweetly In the verdant forest; In the verdant forest, On the slender branches.
Thither came three sportsmen, Nightingale to shoot at. She implored the sportsmen, "Shoot me not, ye sportsmen!
Shoot me not, ye sportsmen! I will give you music, In the verdant garden, On the crimson rose-tree."
But the sportsmen seize her; They deceive the songster, In a cage confine her, Give her to their loved one.
Nightingale will sing not— Hangs its head in silence: Then the sportsmen bear her To the verdant forests.
Soon her song is waken'd; "Woe! woe! betides us, Friend from friend divided, Bird from forest banish'd!" S. J. B.
XLIV
THE DANCE
Omar's court is near to Sarajevo; All around it is a woody mountain: In the midst there is a verdant meadow; There the maidens dance their joyous Kolo[[20]] In the Kolo there is Damian's loved one; O'er the Kolo her fair head uprises, Rises gay and lustrous in her beauty. 'Midst the Kolo Nicholas address'd her: "Veil your face, thou Damian's best beloved! For to-day death's summons waits on Damian. Half thy face veil over, lovely maiden!" Hardly the prophetic words were utter'd, Ere a gun was heard from the green forest; Damian, wounded, fell amidst the Kolo— Damian fell, and thus his love address'd him: "O my Damian! O my sun of spring time! Wherefore, wherefore, didst thou shine so brightly, Thus so soon to sink behind the mountain?" "My beloved! O thou rose all beauteous! Wherefore didst thou bloom so fair, so lovely, And I never can enjoy, nor wear thee?" S. J. B.