Came in the house of Soplicowo; well
One might suppose that some presentiment
Of strange events forthcoming, sealed all lips,
And raised all spirits to the land of dreams.
The supper o’er, the Judge and guests went forth
Into the court to enjoy the evening air;
They sit upon the banks all spread with turf.
The company, with still and gloomy cheer,
Looked up into the sky, which seemed to lower
Itself, and narrower grow, and evermore
To approach the earth; till both beneath the veil
Of darkness hidden, like a loving pair,
Began their secret converse, by their sighs
Suppressed their love confessing, by their whispers,
By murmurs, and by soft tones half aloud,
That formed a wondrous music of the evening.
The owl began it, from the gable-roof
Hooting; and with the rustling of their wings
The bats did whisper; near the house they flew
Where window-panes and human faces gleamed.
But nearer moths, the sisters of the bats,
Circled in swarms, lured by the garments white
Worn by the women; most they teased Sophia,
Striking against her face and her bright eyes,
Mistaking them for lights. And in the air
A mighty ring of insects gathered round,
Playing like spheres of an harmonica.
Sophia’s ear distinguished, ’mid the thousand
Murmurs, the chord of humming of the flies,
And a false semitone the gnats created.
The evening’s concert in the fields was scarce
Begun, for its musicians even now
Their instruments were tuning; now three times
The landrail screeched, the mead’s first violin;
Now from afar the bittern’s bass again
Re-echoed him from out the marsh; and now
The woodcocks, rising upwards, circled round,
And shrieked once, twice, as beating upon drums,
Finale to the murmurs of the flies,
And the birds’ cries; a double chorus woke
Of two ponds, as among the Caucasus
Those lakes enchanted, silent in the day,
But musical at evening. One pond, with
Bright water and a sandy shore, gave forth
A solemn low sigh from its azure breast.
The other pond, with muddy depths, and throat
More hoarse, replied with passionate grieving cry.
In both were singing countless hordes of frogs.
Both choirs were tuned unto two great accords;
One seemed fortissimo, the other soft
And piano; one appeared to cry aloud,
The other merely sighed; thus through the fields
Each pond held converse with the other pond,
Like two Aeolian harps, that in their play
Answered each other. Thicker grew the dusk,
And only in the grove, and round the osiers
Upon the brook, were gleaming wolfish eyes,
Like candles. Far along the horizon’s verge,
The fires of shepherds’ camps gleamed here and there.
At last the moon uplit her silver torch,
She issued from the thicket, and illumed
Both sky and earth. From twilight now unveiled,
They slept beside each other, like to happy
Consorts. The heaven in its pure arms embraced
The bosom of the earth, by moonlight silvered.
Now opposite the moon one star, and then
Another, now a thousand gleamed, a million
Now twinkled; at the head of them shone bright
Castor, together with his brother Pollux,
Among the ancient Slavs called Lel and Polel,202
Now in the zodiac of the common folk
Re-christened; one named Litva, and the other
The Crown.203 The two Scales of the heavenly balance
Shine further on; the Lord, upon the day
Of the creation, as our old men tell,
Weighed all the planets and the earth in turn
Upon them, ere into the deeps of space
Helaunched their weights. The golden balance then
He hung in heaven; therefrom men received
The model of their scales and balances.
Towards the north the starry circle shines
Of that famed Sieve,204 through which the Lord, they say,
The rye-grains sifted, which from heaven he threw
To father Adam, banished from the garden
Of pleasure for his sin. A little higher
Stands David’s chariot,205 ready for career,
Its long beam pointing to the polar star.
The ancient Litvins of this chariot knew
That common people wrongly call it David’s;
It is an angel’s car. In it, ere time,
Rode Lucifer, when he defied the Lord,
And drove on headlong by the Milky Way
To heaven’s threshold, until Michael hurled him
Down from his car, and cast it from the road.
Now broken, doth it roll among the stars;
The Archangel Michael suffers not repair.
And this too know we from the old Litvini,
But they no doubt first learned it from the Rabbins,
That Dragon of the zodiac, long and great,206
Who winds his starry folds across the sky,
Whom sages wrongly have the Serpent called,
No snake is, but a fish, Leviathan.
Ere time he dwelt within the seas, but after
The deluge from the lack of water died.
So angels hung him on the vault of heaven,
Partly for his strange figure, and in part
As a remembrance; they suspended there
His lifeless remnants, as the priest of Mir
Once hung up in his church the fossil ribs
And vertebrae of giants.207 Such old stories
About the stars which he had learned from books,
Or from tradition knew, the Wojski told.
Although the ancient Wojski’s sight was weak
At evening, and he could through spectacles
See nought in heaven, he knew by heart the names
And figures of each constellation there;
And so he pointed out their every place,
And orbit of their motion. Few to-day
Listened to him, or heeded not at all
The Sieve, the Dragon, or the Scales. To-day
A new guest, hitherto unseen in heaven,
Had drawn all eyes and thoughts unto itself.
This was a comet of first magnitude208
And power, that in the west appeared, and flew
Towards the north, and with a blood-red eye
Looked askance on the chariot, as it would
Assume the empty place of Lucifer.
It threw long tresses backward, and therein
Enwrapped the third part of the heavens, and gathered
As in a net a thousand stars,209 and drew
Them after it, and measured ever higher
To northward with its head, and pointed straight
Up to the Polar star. With unexpressed
Foreboding, the Litvanian folk each night
Gazed on this heavenly wonder, and therefrom
Deduced ill-omen, as from other signs.
For they too often heard the cries of birds
Ill-omened, who in flocks on desert plains
Gather, and whet their beaks, as they expect
Corpses. Too often marked they how the dogs
Tore up the earth, and as though scenting death,
Howled fearfully, portending war or famine.
The guardians of the forest had beheld
The maiden of the pestilence pass through
The cemetery, she whose brow is high
Above the highest trees, and whose left hand
