To the Sons of My Nation

The time has come for this night
to pass,
and for its darkness to be scattered,
that the fresh dawn of life may break
and its light flood the whole inhabited earth.

The time has come to shake from us
the dust of the past centuries
and to kindle a new dawn,
everlasting,
from the fires of our lances,
flooding the plains and the lowlands
and driving out the darkness of night,
so that the keepers of our vineyards spring out
on the trail of the wanton foxes
and hunt them down for us
before they work their havoc there
and spoil the clusters.

The time has come for us to cast off
rule,
for its day is done,

and to free ourselves from the morals of the stranger,
to throw away the manners of the weak,
to be true to our own mighty selves
and trust in our immortal genius;
for our mission is great
and must be carried out ...
because the generations
now wait
on coals hotter than embers ...

The time has come for the world to listen
to the roar of the lions
before they spring from their dens;
for the air has grown used
to echoing the howling of foxes
until people took it for a roar —
and I hate a roar that is like a howl.
My ears have come
to long for the anthems of war,
their words bursting forth
like molten lava
from the mouths of tried and proven heroes.