I
’Twas dawn, ’tis evening light,
So passes Day divine.
Again the weary folk
And all things earthly
Take their rest.
I alone, remorseful
For my country’s woes,
Weep day and night,
By the thronged cross-roads,
Unheeded by all.
They see not, they know not;
Deaf ears, they hear not.
They trade old fetters for new
And barter righteousness,
Make nothing of their God.
They harness the people
With heavy yokes.
Evil they plough,
With evil they sow.
What crops will spring?
What harvest will you see?
Arouse ye, unnatural ones.
Children of Herod!
Look on this calm Eden,
Your own Ukraine,
Bestow on her tender love,
Mighty in her ruins.
Break your fetters,
Join in brotherhood,
Seek not in foreign lands
Things that are not.
Nor yet in Heaven,
Nor in stranger’s fields,
But in your own house
Lies your righteousness,
Your strength and your liberty.
In the world is but one Ukraine,
Dnieper—there is only one.
But you must off to foreign lands
To look for something grand and good.
Wealth of goodness and liberty,
Fraternity and so forth, you found.
And back you brought to Ukraine
From places far away
A wondrous force
of lofty sounding words,
And nothing more.
Shout aloud
That God created you for this,
To bow the knee to lies,
To bend and bend again
Your spineless backs
And skin again
Your brothers—
These ignorant buckwheat farmers.
Try again
to ripen crops of truth and light
In Germany
or some other foreign place.
If one should add
all our present misery
To the wealth
Our fathers stole
Orphaned, indeed, would Dnieper be
with all his holy hills.
Faugh! if it should happen
that you would never come back,
Or get snuffed out
just where you were spawned
No children would weep
nor mothers lament,
Nor in God’s house be heard
the story of your shame.
The sun would not shine
on the stench of your filth
O’er the clean, broad, free land,
Nor would the people know
what eagles you were
Nor turn their heads to gaze.
Arouse ye, be men!
For evil days come.
Quickly a people enchained
Shall tear off their fetters;
Judgment will come,
Dnieper and the hills will speak.
A hundred rivers
flow to the sea
with your children’s blood,
Nor will there be any to help.
Smoke clouds hide the sun
Through the ages
Your sons shall curse you.
Wash yourselves—
The divine likeness in you
defile not with slime.
Befool not your children
that they were born to the world
to be lordlings.
The eyes of men untaught
see deep, deep
into your soul.
Poor things they may be,
yet they know the ass
in the lion’s skin.
And they will judge you,
the foolish will pronounce the doom
of the wise.