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312 FOLK-SONGS OF ROUMANIA. |
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Were it earth in an earthy bed ; My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead ; Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red, —
with the simple utterance of the Javanese lover in one of the natural flowers of folk-song, —
I do not know when I shall die,
I have seen at Badoer many that were dead,
They were dressed in white shrouds, and
Were buried in the earth ; If I die at Badoer and am buried beyond the Village eastward against the hill,
Where the grass is high, Then will Adinda pass by there, and the border Of her sarong will sweep sqftly along the grass, — I shall hear it.
There are times when the vitality of poetry seems to be lost as one feels the simple and direct power of some of these ancient songs which spring from the heart and not from the head, and all modern verse seems like the pale and artificial product of intellectuality, weakened feeling, and language refined until it has lost its strength, and one is almost tempted to believe that civilization is as fatal to poetry as it is to religious enthusiasm. Of course this is not the case. The human heart has not lost its strength of feeling nor its power of expression, and modern poetry is greater in its |
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