What still and chilling sternness great cliffs keep!
Down there light calls to me. Soon there I'll be.
Uncanny is such loneliness to me.

THE RUINS OF BALACLAVA

Oh, thankless Crimean land! in ruin laid
Are now the castles that were once your pride!
Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide,
And robbers arm them for the nightly raid.
Upon the lettered marble boasts are made,
Brave words on battered arms in gold descried,
And broken splendor years have scattered wide,
Beside the dead who made them are arrayed.

The Greek set shining, columned marble here.
The Latin put the Mongol horde to flight,
And Mussulmans prayed eastward morn and night.
The owl and vulture of dark wing and drear
Are fluttering like black banners overhead
In cities where the pest piles high the dead.

ON JUDA'S CLIFF

On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that battling beat and break with might,
While farther seaward in a bland delight,
I see them shining where a rainbow shook.
On Juda's Cliff I love to lean and look
On waves that like sea-armies swing to sight,
To send upon the shore their billows white,
And, ebbing, to leave pearls in every nook.

Thus, Poet, in your youth when storms are wild
And passions break upon the heart and brain,
To leave their ruin there--shipwreck and waste--
Pick up your lute! Upon it undefiled
You'll find song-pearls that your heart-deeps retain,
The crown the years have brought you, white and chaste.

Here, then, end the Crimean Sonnets of the immortal hero of Polish
poetry, Adam Mickiezvicz as translated by Edna Worthley Underwood and
published by Paul Elder and Company at their Tomoye Press, in the city
of San Francisco, under the direction of Ricardo J. Orozco, their
printer during the month of August, nineteen seventeen

End of Project Gutenberg's Sonnets from the Crimea, by Adam Mickiewicz

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONNETS FROM THE CRIMEA ***

***** This file should be named 27069.txt or 27069.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/0/6/27069/

Produced by Jimmy O'Regan (This file was produced from
images generously made available by the University of
California Libraries/The Internet Archive)

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public doma