The Chronicler

His soul grown weary-tired in life's stern tempests fending,
Within cloister walls his days he now is ending.
Here is silence, here is calm -- no hubbub and no noise.
Copying a chronicle four years he has employed.
Copying the whole from an ancient parchment,
From first word to the last, of Mahilou and what passed there.
And here are deeds of good and ill-deeds equally
Set in the record. Just so the industrious bee
Even from bitter flowers can fill its combs with honey.
Then of events he saw he adds true testimony.
Here are the things which came to pass in former ages,
What men thought then, and of what disputed sagely,
Why they fought, and how the true faith they defended --
By this paper all made known to their descendants!
All is long-forgotten, dead, on waters drifting --
But now it will arise, once more in memory living,
When they find his simple, unadorned narration,
Telling of that life, its hopes, its expectation.
Just so the blue sea carries to the shore
To us a little flask where resin once was poured,
Covered with small mussel shells and mud. Long, truly,
It lay in the water, much it did endure there;
Some fishermen may find the bottle, stave it in,
and, so it happens, they may find there is, within,
A letter. By the custom of the sea, some message
Sent by shipwrecked sailors. Somewhere they have perished
In the ocean; maybe centuries rolled on
Since that time, maybe the nation now is gone,
And all is changed, and even memory is drowsing!
But, letters, you once more will waken and arouse men,
And then about their forebears they will learn, and read
About their woes and joys, about their noted deeds,
To whom they made their prayer, what for they were seeking,
where on the deep sea floor the waves forever keep them.

M. Bahdanovich 1912