Prologue.
PARVULI EJUS.
In the night, in the night, O my Country, the stream calls out from afar:
So swells thy voice through the ages, sonorous and vast:
In the night, in the night, O my Country, clear flashes the star:
So flashes on me thy face through the gloom of the past.
I sleep not; I watch: in blows the wind ice-wing'd, and ice-finger'd:
My forehead it cools and slakes the fire in my breast;
Though it sighs o'er the plains where oft thine exiles look'd back, and long linger'd,
And the graves where thy famish'd lie dumb and thine outcasts find rest.
For up from those vales wherein thy brave and thy beautiful moulder,
And on through the homsteads waste and the temples defiled,
A voice goes forth on that wind, as old as the Islands and older,
‘God reigns: at His feet earth's Destiny sleeps like a child.’
