Mihály Vörösmarty

Summons (Szózat-1836)
Translated by: Joseph Grosz & W. Arthur Boggs (1966)

1.
Oh Magyars, stand beside your land
Unshaken, loyal, true!
Here is your crib, your future grave
Which tends and covers you.
6.
In spite of many adverse years
And after every strife,
In number less but never crushed,
Our nation is alive.

11.
Magnificent when Death must come
Shall be our final end,
When at the burial, in blood
A country must descend.

2.
There is no other place for you
On earth, beneath the sky.
May fortune bless or break you down
You must live here and die.
7.
Oh nations' country, mighty world!
Our people proudly cry:
'A thousand years of aches and pains
Now want to live and die.'

 
12.
That grave in which a nation lies
All nations will surround,
And millions shall with tearful eyes
Bewail a nation's mound.
3.
This is the land where many times
your fathers' blood was shed;
This is the land, a thousand years
Have buried all your dead.

 
8.
It cannot be that all in vain
So many hearts have bled,
That for their fatherland in vain
These men have fallen dead.
13.
Oh Magyars, stand beside your land
Unshaken, loyal, true!
Here is your crib, your future grave
Which tends and covers you.

 
4.
Here Árpád's valiant armies fought
To build your fatherland;
Here were the chains of serfdom torn
By Hunyad's mighty hand.
9.
It cannot be that mind and strength
And every sacred will
Have withered forth for vain desires
Beneath an evil ill.

 
14.
There is no other place for you
On earth, beneath the sky.
May fortune bless or break you down
You must live here and die.
5.
Here, Liberty, your blood-stained flag
Was carried on ahead;
During the lasting wars our best
Have here been stricken dead.

 
10.
A better age arrives it must,
It shall arrive again;
For this a fervent prayer is prayed
By millions of our men.
 

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