Pagina 23 de 788

"To-day, for us, unbidden guests in the world, in all the past

and in all the future-to-day there is but one region in which

there is a crumb of happiness for a Pole: the land of his

childhood! That land will ever remain holy and pure as first

love; undisturbed by the remembrance of errors, not undermined by

the deceitfulness of hopes, and unchanged by the stream of

events.

* * * * * *

"Gladly would I greet with my thoughts those lands where I rarely

wept and never gnashed my teeth; lands of my childhood, where one

roamed over the world as through a meadow, and among the flowers

knew only those that were lovely and fair, throwing aside the

poisonous, and not glancing at the useful.