DEPRAVED YOUTHS

To you I am descending, oh you, deluded souls!

To set your gall a-seething - you, minds like fumaroles –

I'm carrying a curse;

My curse is misanthropic, with purple, claw-like hand –

With this I stamp your foreheads, instead of cattlebrand:

A stigma, if not worse.

Although I know my lyre is doomed to sound in vain

Around your fuddled reason, soaked in the vices' rain

And spurred by passions' shove,

Around your fuddled reason, which orgies caused to sink,

From many frenzies rotten - now parched by too much drink

And drained of ardent love.

In vain will wrath be boiling in veins dried up and stewed,

In wholly deadened eye-balls, on foreheads purple-hued

By putrid blood that died;

The Prophet will at no time be struck with any fright

By arms deprived of vigour, by th'almost fainting might '

Of fops whose hair is dyed.

What can I ever winnow from your exhausted wight?

No fire free from dying, no undeceiving right,

Oh, youngmen, dead-alive!

How could I praise your courage when it's displayed in furies,

In heaps of bottles broken with noisy shameless houries ,

Whom orgies cause to thrive?

I see you sprawl on couches - of Youth which you've defiled;

I watch you spread diseases begot by lives so wild:

You're rotten to the core!

You fawn on beasts ferocious that keep in gyves the now;

To grim and stupid faces you meanly cringe and bow:

Tis them that you adore!

Wake up!... For there's a rally of bygone years aligned

Triumphantly unfurling their banner in the wind

Since Rome now lives anew;

The people are now emp'rors and with begodded brows,

With unextinguished torches, advancing like proud prows

They march in glory true.

Wake up!... for there's an omen in that lugubrious trump

Which tries to bully nations with all the roar and thump

Of lions seized by fear;

All those who breathe state freedom; the world belongs to all;

So liberty and justice are not an empty call:

They've made a fine career.

You ought to gird your broadswords for grim and deathly dance:

The wind should blow you hither, not only to the trance

Of waltzes that amaze!

Tis here should flock battalions, to this you should aspire:

To rush in stormy fashion, like deluges of fire,

In forests set ablaze.

Behold, the urn is bursting, the ashes come to life,

The past exhorts the Romans and calls them to the strife

For which there's no appeaser;

You see the far-off shadows; they dress in steely mail,

And raise their noble foreheads - gone grey and yet still hale:

Great Trajan and great Caesar.

The rotten thrones are crumbling, swept by the mighty waves:

The rulers' iron sceptres, the heavy chains of slaves,

Together are now crushed;

The gates of the Inferno are oped by many deaths

Admitting now by thousands the most obnoxious breaths

Of tyrants downwards rushed.

In vain is my voice sounding, by echoes taken up:

Your souls are blunted, aged - for stupour, wassail cup

And idleness they've chosen.

Unleashed and stately virtue, our godlike Fatherland

Can hardly kindle fires, a sparkling saraband,

In hearts forever frozen.

I am alone in searching, like vultures, from a crest,

Among the hearts of youngsters of any life undressed -

A carcass to be torn;

I'm like the hawks which hover on circling skyey tracks,

I'm like the brows of mountains which frown with cloudy racks

And thunderstorm at dawn.

At least refrain from boasting there's feeling in your souls

For nobody can cover in garb of faded stoles

The sacred mystery;

Your speech is always jarring, it sounds like wedding croons

Like birds of omen trying to sing some merry tunes, -

Or like a fun'ral spree.

Translated by Andrei Bantas

HOME > LITERATURE > POETRY > EMINESCU’S POEMS