Хаджи Димитър [Khadzhi Dimitŭr] [English translation]

He lives yet! He lives yet! There on the Balkan –

The blood has run dark from his bosom to die.

Behold the young hero whose bosom was throbbing,

Whose blood ever shouted as dawn in the sky.

There on the ground has he thrown the long rifle,

too and broken his sabre is hurled,

Over his eyes now the darkness is spreading,

On his lip trembles a curse for the world.

Silent he lies there and in the heavens

Has the sun halted and angrily glows,

Far down in the meadow some worker is singing

And faster and faster thet hero-blood flows.

It is the harvest. Sing, you slave-worker,

Sing the sad songs! You are shining, O sun,

Over a slave-land; ’twill die with our hero –

Have done with your tempests, my bosom, have done.

He that has fallen fighting for freedom

Chooses not death – to that hero belong

The tears of the sky and of earth and her children

And of the voice of the maker of song.

An eagle is spreading her wing for a shadow,

A grey wolf is licking the wound and above,

Above them the falcon, that bird of the heroes,

Floats over his brother, for sorrow and love.

Now falls the twilight and the moon clambers

Into that arch where the happy stars dance,

Now the wood rustles, now the wind hisses,

Now chants the Balkan a robber’s romance.

And all the white arrayed elves of the forest

Trumpet their wondering, silvery strain,

Softly they float thro’ the shadows above him,

Till they alight as the summer-sweet rain.

One of them brings the keen herbs of the woodland,

Another brings water to quicken his brow,

Another one calls him to life with her kisses,

So that he turns like a wind-embraced bough.

„Tell, me, where is my comrade Karadja?

Where are the faithfull who followed my sword?

Tell me and I shall sleep sweetly, my sisters,

Where the sweet blood from my body has poured.”

They clap with their hands, they embrace one another

And singing they fly on the back of the wind,

Fly to the dim region where ghosts have assembled

But never the ghost of Karadja they find.

Now dawn has leaped to the mountains;

the hero on the Balkan. Ah! see, the blood flows,

The grey wolf is licking his wound and the poison,

Scarlet the sun is and angrily glows.