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Stanislaw Herakliusz Lubomirski
Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski - A Quiet Moment Comes After a Storm
A Quiet Moment Comes After a Storm
A quiet moment comes after a storm,
Tulips blossom again after the snow,
After the dark night, the day takes its form,
A light beam comes back from night
1
in full glow.
The heart oft rejoices after tears swarm
And the time comes that fortune swore to show,
Even if one lost his way in a maze,
He will at the end reach the destined place.
The compass that keeps drawing on the board
Will be closed up and put into its case;
The king moving on a complex chessboard
2
Will come to checkmate,
3
although not apace;
An unchecked runner
4
will come to a stop,
5
One who's lost in woods will reach open space,
After one turn, a star comes from the west,
6
The swallow flies again to make its nest.
The flame, having burned ashes in its blaze
Will go its way for the highest sphere bound,
Water will visit its winding valleys
And fall into the sea, ending its round,
A glad pilgrim after long travel days
Is greeted at home. So all things around,
Even if they went as far as they might,
End up where they started, at their first site.
Translated by Michael J. Mikoś
Notes
1
The rosy beam returns from the place between the evening and the morning light, that is from the hours of darkness.
2
In the original, the chessboard is 'sage.' Lubomirski employs here a figure of speech, called
hypallage
, an interchange of syntactic relationship between two terms. It is the king who is sage, not the chessboard. Cf. l. 17, where the flame burns an object, not its ashes.
3
An ambiguous word in Polish, indicating both the end of a chess game and the reached goal.
4
Another ambiguity, as the word referred to a running person or to a horse.
5
The sonnet rhyme pattern of the original stanza (d e d e d e f f) is broken in line 13.
6
It was believed that the wandering stars revolved around the fixed stars, which in turn circled the earth.