Life /
Poetry and Poets of Poland [58]
Being very fond of blondes, flowers and hemp I cite two of my favorite passages from Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz:
The mass began. The little sanctuary could not contain the entire throng; the folk kneeled on the grass, gazing at the door of the chapel, and bared their heads. The white or yellow hair of the Lithuanian folk was gilded like a field of ripe grain; here and there a maiden's fair head, decked with fresh flowers or with peacock's feathers, and with ribbons flowing loose from her braided hair, blossomed among the men's heads like a corn-flower or poppy amid the wheat. The kneeling, many-coloured throng covered the plain, and at the sound of the bell, as though at a breath of wind, all heads bent down like ears of corn on a field.
In that thick, green, fragrant growth around the house there is a sure refuge for beasts and men. Often a hare, caught among the cabbages, leaps to find surer hiding in the hemp than in the shrubbery, for among the close-set stalks no greyhound can catch it, nor foxhound smell it out because of the strong odour. In the hemp a serving man, fleeing from the whip or the fist, sits quietly until his master has spent his wrath. And often even runaway peasant recruits, while the government is tracking them in the woods, are sitting in the hemp. And hence at the time of battles, forays, and confiscations, each side uses immense exertions to occupy a position in the hemp, which commonly extends forward to the walls of the mansion, and backward until it joins the hop fields, and thus covers their attack and retreat from the enemy.
