C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Prisoner

Translation of A. E. Staley

AWAY from the prison shade!

Give me the broad daylight;

Bring me a black-eyed maid,

A steed dark-maned as night.

First the maiden fair

Will I kiss on her ruddy lips,

Then the dark steed shall bear

Me, like the wind, to the steppes.

But the heavy door hath a bar,

The prison window is high;

The black-eyed maiden afar

In her own soft bed doth lie;

In meadow green the horse,

Unbridled, alone, at ease,

Gallops a playful course

And tosses his tail to the breeze.

Lonely am I, unjoying

Amid bare prison walls;

The light in the lamp is dying,

Dimmer the shadow falls;

And only, without my room,

I hear the measured ring

Of the sentry’s steps in the gloom,

As he treads unanswering.