Whether I roam along the noisy streets Whether I enter the peopled temple, Whether I sit by thoughtless youth, Haunt my thoughts me everywhere. I say, Swiftly go the years by: However great our number now, Must all descend the eternal vaults,-- Already struck has some one's hour. And if I gaze upon the lonely oak I think: the patriarch of the woods Will survive my passing age As he survived my father's age. And if a tender babe I fondle Already I mutter, Fare thee well! I yield my place to thee. For me 'T is time to decay, to bloom for thee Every year thus, every day With death my thought I join Of coming death the day I seek among them to divine. Where will Fortune send me death? In battle? In wanderings, or on the waves Or shall the valley neighboring Receive my chilled dust? But tho' the unfeeling body Can everywhere alike decay, Still I, my birthland nigh Would have my body lie. Let near the entrance to my grave Cheerful youth be in play engaged, And let indifferent creation With beauty shine there eternally. 1829. [RIGHTS.] IV. 10. Not dear I prize high-sounding rights By which is turned more head than one; Not murmur I that not granted the Gods to me The blessed lot of discussing fates, Of hindering kings from fighting one another; And little care I whether free the press is. All this you see are _words, words, words!_ Other, better rights, dear to me are; Other, better freedom is my need.... To depend on rulers, or the mob-- Is not all the same it? God be with them! To give account to none; to thyself alone To serve and please; for power, for a livery Nor soul, nor mind, nor neck to bend: Now here, now there to roam in freedom Nature's beauties divine admiring, And before creations of art and inspiration Melt silently in tender ecstasy-- This is bliss, these are rights!.... THE GYPSIES. IV. 157. Over the wooded banks, In the hour of evening quiet, Under the tents are song and bustle And the fires are scattered. Thee I greet, O happy race! I recognize thy blazes, I myself at other times These tents would have followed. With the early rays to-morrow Shall disappear your freedom's trace, Go you will--but not with you Longer go shall the bard of you. He alas, the changing lodgings, And the pranks of days of yore Has forgot for rural comforts And for the quiet of a home. THE DELIBASH. IV. 155. Cross-firing behind the hills: Both camps watch, theirs and ours; In front of Cossaks on the hill Dashes 'long brave Delibash O Delibash, not to the line come nigh, Do have mercy on thy life; Quick 't is over with thy frolic bold, Pierced thou by the spear shalt be