While Mr. Bowring pays cheerful homage to a rhyme translation of a Servian ballad, in the Quarterly Review, No. LXIX. p. 71, he adds, that it is greatly embellished, and offers a version, in blank verse, more faithful to the original, and therefore more interesting to the critical inquirer. The following specimen of Mr. Bowring’s translation may be compared with the corresponding passage in the Review.
She was lovely—nothing e’er was lovelier;
She was tall and slender as the pine tree;
White her cheeks, but tinged with rosy blushes,
As if morning’s beam had shone
Till that beam had reach’d its high meridian;
And her eyes, they were two precious jewels;
And her eyebrows, leeches from the ocean;
And her eyelids, they were wings of swallows;
Silken tufts the maiden’s flaxen ringlets;
And her sweet mouth was a sugar casket;
And her teeth were pearls array’d in order;
White her bosom, like two snowy dovelets;
And her voice was like the dovelet’s cooing;
And her smiles were like the glowing sunshine.
On the eyebrows of the bride, described as “leeches from the ocean,” it is observable that, with the word leech in Servian poetry, there is no disagreeable association. “It is the name usually employed to describe the beauty of the eyebrows, as swallows’ wings are the simile used for eyelashes.” A lover inquires
“Hast thou wandered near the ocean?
Has thou seen the pijavitza?[139]
Like it are the maiden’s eyebrows.”
There is a stronger illustration of the simile in
The Brotherless Sisters.
Two solitary sisters, who
A brother’s fondness never knew.
Agreed, poor girls, with one another.
That they would make themselves a brother.
They cut them silk, as snow-drops white;
And silk, as richest rubies bright;
They carved his body from a bough
Of box-tree from the mountain’s brow;
Two jewels dark for eyes they gave;
For eyebrows, from the ocean’s wave
They took two leeches; and for teeth
Fix’d pearls above, and pearls beneath;
For food they gave him honey sweet.
And said, “Now live, and speak, and eat.”
The tenderness of Servian poetry is prettily exemplified in another of Mr. Bowring’s translations.
Farewell.
Against white Buda’s walls, a vine
Doth its white branches fondly twine:
O no! it was no vine-tree there
It was a fond, a faithful pair,
Bound each to each in earliest vow—
And, O! they must be severed now!
And these their farewell words:—“We part—
Break from my bosom—break—my heart!
Go to a garden—go, and see,
Some rose-branch blushing on the tree;
And from that branch a rose-flower tear,
Then place it on thy bosom bare;
And as its leavelets fade and pine,
So fades my sinking heart in thine.”
And thus the other spoke: “My love!
A few short paces backward move,
And to the verdant forest go;
There’s a fresh water-fount below;
And in the fount a marble stone,
Which a gold cup reposes on;
And in the cup a ball of snow—
Love! take that ball of snow to rest
Upon thine heart within thy breast,
And as it melts unnoticed there,
So melts my heart in thine, my dear!”