Synopsis
This is the only such collection of Dutch poetry in translation from medieval times to the present, as prior anthologies have been limited to contemporary poets or to feminist verse. It contains more than one hundred poems in bilingual text, with Dutch and English on facing pages. This is a rare example of poetry translated into poetry, preserving form and style with remarkable fidelity.
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A MAY SONG
Anonymous (14th/15th centuries: date uncertain)
"My lovely dear, why lie you here
To sleep away the time?
Rise up and take this budding may,
Already in its prime."
"For no may do I want to rise
Or open windows wide;
Plant your may in your own way,
Plant your may outside!"
"Where should I plant or put it then?
'Tis all in the Lord's bower;
The winter night is cold and long,
It would forget to flower."
"Sweet love, if it forgets to flower,
We'll bury it where the moss is
In the churchyard by the eglantine;
Its grave will bloom with roses."
"Sweet love, and round those roses there
The nightingale shall play,
And every spring shall sweetly sing
His songs for us in May."
Footnote:
The word 'may' ('mei' in Dutch) is used in this poem for both the month and the mayflower. The distinction is less obvious in the original, because the names of months are not capitalized in Dutch.
LOVELY WEATHER AND BABIES
Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687)
Lovely children in their crib,
Lovely weather at the gate,
The two, they have a common trait:
They seem to me - Truth cannot fib -
Loveliest, and we profit by it
Most, when they are dry and quiet.
EPITAPH
for P. C. Hooft *
Jan Vos (1620-1667)
Death has vanquished Hooft. The stone covers his grave.
Time turns him into ash: but none the power shall have
To fell that noble mind. Now his few hours are past,
And yet his pen shall Death and Stone and Time outlast.
Footnote:
* P. C. Hooft: a contemporary historian, playwright and poet, also represented in this collection.
BOUTAGE
An Ode to the Dutch Climate
Petrus Augustus de Genestet (1829-1861)
O land of mist and muck and dampness all-pervading,
O soggy piece of soil, of chilly, dirty rain,
Of deep and slimy mire and mud-roads beyond wading,
Of toothaches and of gout, umbrellas and migraine!
O tedious morass, O acres of galoshes,
Of bargemen, geese and frogs, of swampgods all and one,
Of every kind of duck that in the puddle sloshes,
Receive the autumn moan of your rheumatic son!
Your cloudy, clammy clime so unconciliatory
Has turned my blood to mud: there's peace nor joy for me.
Put on your overshoes, O hallowed ground of glory,
That - not at my request - was wrested from the sea.
MOTHER
Jacqueline van der Waals (1868-1922)
Mother, who so long ago did leave me
From childhood on still aching for your love;
But oh, how are you going to receive me
So soon now, when we meet above?
Oh can it be that as your child you'll greet
Me, when I wake again when I am dead?
And may I then kneel down before your feet,
There in your lap to lay my head?
But what then? What is it that you shall say,
Among the humming of the angels there,
When you your young white hand shall lay
Upon this old, grey hair?
BUTTERFLY
Anthonie Donker (1902-1965)
A butterfly, half blinded by our light,
has from the darkening garden wandered in -
She, the familiar of the summer day,
the wind that stirs the cradle of the flowers,
has from that lovely kingdom turned away
and with those fluttering wings made her descent
into my motionless, astonished hand.
In that dark hollow, on this rough terrain
like a barbaric and unwelcoming land
on which she now has chosen to remain,
so confidently did she perch and stay
that musing on it, it reminded me
how you, with such unhesitating grace
dared enter my heart, confident and free,
and with your glow lit up that darkened place.
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