Kochanowski, Jan Lament II http://www.wolnelektury.pl/lektura/laments http://wolnelektury.pl/katalog/lektura/treny-tren-ii/ Prall, Dorothea Kozioł, Paweł Lech, Justyna Niedziałkowska, Marta Fundacja Nowoczesna Polska Renesans Liryka Tren Publikacja zrealizowana w ramach projektu Wolne Lektury (http://wolnelektury.pl). Reprodukcja cyfrowa wykonana przez Bibliotekę Narodową z egzemplarza pochodzącego ze zbiorów BN. Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego. http://wolnelektury.pl/katalog/lektura/laments-lament-ii http://polona.pl/item/333575/1/ Jan Kochanowski, Laments, University of California Press, Berkeley 1920 Domena publiczna - Dorothea Prall xml text text 2014-11-18 eng http://redakcja.wolnelektury.pl/media/cover/image/13930543961_7db6e2635f_k.jpg Did the Plastic Egg Come First?, David Goehring, CC BY 2.0 http://redakcja.wolnelektury.pl/cover/image/3630 Jan Kochanowski Laments Lament II If I had ever thought to write in praise/ Of little children and their simple ways,/ Far rather had I fashioned cradle verse/ To rock to slumber, or the songs a nurse/ Might croon above the baby on her breast,/ Setting her charge's short-lived woes at rest./ For much more useful are such trifling tasks/ Than that which sad misfortune this day asks:/ To weep o'er thy deaf grave, dear maiden mine,/ And wail the harshness of grim ProserpineProserpine --- Roman goddess of spring, spending winter in the underworld as a wife of Pluto; equivalent of Greek Persephone../ But now I have no choice of subject: then/ I shunned a theme scarce fitting riper men,/ And now disaster drives me on by force/ To songs unheeded by the great concourse/ Of mortals. Verses that I would not sing/ The living, to the dead I needs must bring./ Yet though I dry the marrow from my bones,/ Weeping another's death, my grief atones/ No whit. All forms of human doom/ Arouse but transient thoughts of joy or gloom./ O law unjust, O grimmest of all maids,/ Inexorable princess of the shades!/ For, Ursula, thou hadst but tasted time/ And art departed long before thy prime./ Thou hardly knewest that the sun was bright/ Ere thou didst vanish to the halls of night./ I would thou hadst not lived that little breath ---/ What didst thou know, but only birth, then death?/ And all the joy a loving child should bring/ Her parents, is become their bitterest sting.