An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Beethoven
Adagio, op. 27
Beethoven
O sorrow of statues, which display in temples
Their white and marble-wrought nakedness to pilgrims,
Enter my spirit!
Set foot amid fruitless and overcast days, all in sable,
That trail one after the other in sluggish greyness,
Desolate and listless .
O sorrow of funereal, billowing rhythms,
Where in darkened shrine the black-robed priest
Sanctifies a requiem.
All vanishes, wanes, benumbed and chilled amid ashes.
All outlived and marred. All wastes away,
Mere shadow amid shadows.
O hand of death, laid suddenly upon the forehead.
O horror of ending, that at the last, sets aquiver the body,
Which long has been dying.
Calm of the dead, who are resting in vaults
Under a heavy slab with its arching scutcheon
Of perished kinsmen.
That many a year no vessel has furrowed,
That darken in metallic and twilit tints,
Desolately day upon day. . . .
Calm of tottering crosses, blackened in the twilight,
In decayed and unpeopled regions, abounding
With chillness of horror.
Which in the North have been frozen amid eternal ice,
Whose crews long have perished beneath the masts,
Tortured by hunger.
As the countryside at night in the greenish moonrays,
Calm of all those, who have fared, but to falter
In the midst of the journey. . . .
Conversations with Death (1904)
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1951, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 73 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
