Mihály Vörösmarty THE ANCIENT GYPSY Strike up gypsy, you have quaffed your wages, Don't just dangle those feet, giddy up! Life is boring on mere bread and water, Pour some wine into your empty cup. Mortal life is always playing games, Shivering or bursting into flames; Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Let your blood boil like the raging ocean, Let the brain burst in between your temples, Let your eyes glow with a comet's fire, Boom your strings the way the bedrock trembles, And howl as a hailstorm at its hardest, Wretched folk were cheated of the harvest... Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Learn music from the blowing tempest From its frenzied, shrill apocalypse, Slaughtering men, devastating homesteads, Twisting trees and wrecking mighty ships. The holiest sepulchre of the Lord Shivers with the raging war abroad. Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Who has sighed this stifled lamentation, What roars in this savage strorm, forsaken, Who pounds on the columns of creation, What cries sobbing like the mills of satan? Tortured spirit, damned soul, fallen angel, Daring hopes or withering betrayal? Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Do we hear again the savage curses Rebelling man so desperately hurled, Bludgeon blows that caused the brother's murder, Dirge of the first orphans in the world, The beat of the cruel vulture's wing. Prometheus's endless suffering? Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Let this blind star, miserable molehill Go on turning in its bitter juices. Till the raging fever will have cleansed it Of illusions, squalor, vile abuses, Then let Noah's Ark sail into sight With a reborn humankind inside. Strike up, play the stately and the quick, While your bow is more than just a stick. Cup and soul, so full of wine and woe, Strike up gypsy, let your troubles go! Strike up! No! - Allow the strings a rest, One day we shall celebrate again, When the evil nightmare fades away, When dissension is solidly slain. Then: play passionately, from the heart, Let the Gods enjoy your noble art, That's the time to touch your bow to string, Cheer up from your gloomy slumbering, Joy shall fill your soul like heady wine, Srike up, lave the troubled world behind! Translated by Peter Zollman