Pagina 219 di 788

Ye forests! the last to come hunting among you was the last king

who wore the cap of Witold,64 the last fortunate warrior of the

Jagiellos, and the last huntsman among the rulers of Lithuania.

Trees of my Fatherland! if Heaven grants that I return to behold

you, old friends, shall I find you still? Do ye still live? Ye,

among whom I once crept as a child-does great Baublis65 still

live, in whose bulk, hollowed by ages, as in a goodly house,

twelve could sup at table? Does the grove of Mendog66 still bloom

by the village church? And there in the Ukraine, does there still

rise on the banks of the Ros, before the mansion of the

Holowinskis, that linden tree so far-spreading that beneath its

shade a hundred youths and a hundred maidens were wont to join as

partners in the dance?