Thou from thy hopeless heart that love shalt cast— That child of earth, false, illegitimate: Shalt fling it to the night and wintry blast— Out in the storm—there let it find its fate. There motherless and orphaned let it weep, And let the wind its sobbings onward bear Unto some desert place, or stormy deep— But not where human soul its voice may hear. The wind is howling in its agony All through this snow-bound night, with piercing cry; Alas, beneath the broken willow tree My shattered love lies dying—let it die. THE ARMENIAN POET’S PRAYER By ALEXANDER DZADOURIAN (Born 1870) O God, ’tis not for laurel wreaths I pray, For pompous funeral or jubilee; Nor yet for fame beyond my life’s decay— All these my country will accord to me. One favour, Lord of Heaven, I implore— One that my land to me will never give: Grant me a crust of bread, or else such store Of grace that I on air may learn to live! THE CHRAGAN PALACE By THOMAS TERZYAN (1842–1909) Have you ever seen that wondrous building, Whose white shadows in the blue wave sleep? There Carrara sent vast mounds of marble, And Propontis, beauty of the deep. From the tombs of centuries awaking, Souls of every clime and every land Have poured forth their rarest gifts and treasures Where those shining halls in glory stand. Ships that pass before that stately palace, Gliding by with open sails agleam, In its shadow pause and gaze, astonished, Thinking it some Oriental dream. New its form, more wondrous than the Gothic, Than the Doric or Ionic fair; At command of an Armenian genius [8] Did the master builder rear it there. By the windows, rich with twisted scroll-work, Rising upward, marble columns shine, And the sunbeams lose their way there, wandering Where a myriad ornaments entwine. An immortal smile, its bright reflection In the water of the blue sea lies, And it shames Granada’s famed Alhambra, O’er whose beauty wondering bend the skies. Oft at midnight, in the pale, faint starlight, When its airy outline, clear and fair, On the far horizon is depicted, With its trees and groves around it there, You can fancy that those stones grow living, And, amid the darkness of the night, Change to lovely songs, to which the spirit, Dreaming, listens with a vague delight. Have you ever seen that wondrous building Whose white shadows in the blue wave sleep? There Carrara sent vast mounds of marble, And Propontis, beauty of the deep. It is not a mass of earthly matter, Not a work from clay or marble wrought; From the mind of an Armenian genius Stands embodied there a noble thought. Translated by Alice Stone Blackwell. THE DREAM By SMPAD SHAHAZIZ (1840–1897)