The Alfold

Rugged Carpathians, what is to me
The "wild romance of thy pine forests old?
With admiration I can view thee e'er,
But without love; nor does my fancy stray
Aloft to thy fair mountain vales. But there
-Below, in Alf old's sea-like region, there
Is my own world, my home!- My eagle soul
Springs from its prison bonds, when I behold
The bound'ry of my plain. And so, in thought,
Upward to thee I fly, amid thy clouds,
When smiles upon me then, the image fair
Of that dear plain, from Danube's waters spread
Unto the Tisza's distant shore. Tinkle
Beneath the sky of the mirage, the bells
Of Kis-Kunsag's hundred fat herds, at noon;
While by the well with the long windlass, waits
The double trough, and galloping, the steed

Snorts in the wind, and stamps the ground. The

colts'
Low whining, too, is heard, and of the lash
The cruel sound. There waveth in the field,
Unto the gentle breeze the green, sweet corn,
Adorning with the emerald's glowing tint,
So glorious, the place. The wild ducks come
In the ev'ning's twilight, from the neighboring cane,
Soaring affright, to an aerial path,
If but a zephyr sways the reeds. Then there
Far in the centre of the plain, lonely
An inn is standing, with its chimney, old
And crumbling, where the thirsty peasants come
For goat's milk, as they journey to the fair.
Near the inn is the dwarfed poplar wood,
Yellow is the sand with melons rich;
There where the screaming hawk her nest doth

build,
Where, undisturbed by children, she may rest.
There grows the sad, sad ''orphan's hair" and

blossoms
Blue, of buckthorn, 'bout whose cooling stems
The parti-colored lizards wind themselves
To rest themselves in noonday heat. Beyond,
Far, far away, where earth and heaven meet
The summits, blue of fruit trees dimly rise,
And farther still, like a misty column pale,
The spire of some distant village church is seen.
O, Alfold! fair, at least to me; for here
Was rocked my cradle; here, too, I was born.
May here the dark pall wrap my slumbering form;
In this dear land, I fain would find a grave.