The Prince's Three SorrowsAuthor(s): Ladislas Mécs and Watson KirkconnellSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 9, No. 27 (Mar., 1931), pp. 722-723Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4202581 .

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722 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW.

A FLAG.

By DESIDERIUs KOSZTOLANYI.

JUST a stick and some linen, Yet not stick and linen But a flag.

Ever it speaks. Ever it waves. Ever it is restless. Ever in unconsciousness Above the street It soars aloft, Untom in the sky, And proclaims something Eagerly. If men grow used to it and heed it not, If they slumber also By day and by night, So that it is wholly wasted away And stands, like a gaunt apostolic orator, On the peak of the roof, Still, alone, Wrestling with the calm and the storm, Fruitlessly, ceaselessly, ever majestically It waves, And speaks.

My soul, be thou too, thou too- Not stick and linen- But a flag.

THE PRINCE'S THREE SORROWS.

By LADISLAS MECS.

WHEN I was born, no Messianic star Made proclamation through the world afar; Only my mother knew my avatar.

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POETRY. 723

The others saw a mewling little mite; But she in swaddling clothes enwrapt me quite As if I were the Sun's eternal light.

God knows where she obtained my baby gown, A robe of gold and amethyst and brown; Above my head a sky-blue smile shone down.

She was to me the fulness of all good, She fed me with the milk of motherhood And all the earth seemed sweetness understood.

And still she mends my clothes with piety And cooks my meals and waits in love on me As if her work were done for royalty.

Where I have gone, the very stones have sung And hailed the kingliness of one so young: My darling mother has inspired their tongue.

Thus while she lives, my heart is full of joy; Life would be blessedness without alloy Did not three griefs of thought my peace destroy.

My first of sorrows is that men are blind To signs of royal greatness in their kind, And only mothers mark the princely mind.

My second sorrow is that, should she die And underneath the sod in silence lie, No one thenceforth would know a prince am I.

If every star were diamond through and through, And every bud were pearl, they would not do To pav for all the affection that I knew.

If all earth's mill-streams through my heart should flood And murmur each a psalm of gratitude, Then, even so, my thanks were poor and rude.

If all the earth were Hybla honey sweet, Yet how return her sweetness as is meet ! This, my third sorrow, makes my grief complete.

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