A Wreath Of Sonnets (6/14)

Unblest by soothing winds of warmer days,

My songs remain, since from you, haughty maid,

They never won the word that might be said -

The word that neither saddens nor dismays.

As you were bred upon the German phrase,

Like many a Slovene girl, they were afraid

That from such flowers on our Parnassus laid

With cold disdain you would avert your gaze.

Our Muses were not loved in our own land:

They were but spinsters doomed to lonely ways,

While foreign beauties won both heart and hand.

Like flowers that bud within the glacier's maze,

Our songs are sparse, as though by nature banned,

Above them savage peaks the mountains raise.