Mihály Vörösmarty

Summons

© English translation by Joseph Grosz, W. Arthur Boggs (1966)

Oh Magyars, stand beside your land
Unshaken, loyal, true!
Here is your crib, your future grave
Which tends and covers you.

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.

This is the land where many times
Your fathers' blood was shed;
This is the land, a thousand years
Have buried all your dead.

Here Árpád's valiant armies fought
To build your fatherland;
Here were the chains of serfdom torn
By Hunyad's mighty hand.

Here, Liberty, your blood-stained flag
Was carried on ahead;
During the lasting wars our best
Have here been stricken dead.

In spite of many adverse years
And after every strife,
In number less but never crushed
Our nation is alive.

Oh nations' country, mighty world!
Our people proudly cry:
"A thousand years of aches and pains
Now want to live or die!"

It cannot be that all in vain
So many hearts have bled,
That for their fatherland in vain
These men have fallen dead.

It cannot be that mind and strength
And every sacred will
Have withered forth for vain desires
Beneath an evil ill.

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

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

That grave in which a nation lies
All nations will surround,
And millions shall with tearful eyes
Bewail a nation's mound.

Oh Magyars, stand beside your land,
Unshaken, loyal, true!
Here is your crib, your future grave
Which tends and covers you.

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.

[1836]

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