Arias:
'Tis sad to leave our Fatherland, Thaddeus's aria from The Bohemian Girl
Without friends, and without a home,
my country, too! yes, I'm exiled from thee;
what fate, what fate awaits me here, now!
Pity, Heaven! oh calm my despair.
'Tis sad to leave our Fatherland,
And friends we there loved well,
To wander on a stranger strand,
Where friends but seldom dwell;
Yet, hard as are such ills to bear,
And deeply though they smart,
Their pangs are light to those who are
The orphans of the heart!
Oh! if there were one gentle eye
To weep when I might grieve,
One bosom to receive the sigh
Which sorrow oft will heave;
One heart the ways of life to cheer,
Though rugged they might be,
No language can express, how dear
That heart would be to me!
'Tis hard to leave our Fatherland ...
And friends we there loved well,
To wander on a stranger strand,
Where friends but seldom dwell!
Then you'll remember me, Thaddeus's aria from The Bohemian Girl
When other lips and other hearts
Their tales of love shall tell,
In language whose excess imparts
The power they feel so well:
There may, perhaps, in such a scene,
Some recollection be
Of days that have as happy been,
And you'll remember me!
When coldness or deceit shall slight
The beauty now they prize,
And deem it but a faded light
Which beams within your eyes;
When hollow hearts shall wear a mask,
'Twill break your own to see:
In such a moment I but ask
That you'll remember me!
When the fair land of Poland, Thaddeus's aria from The Bohemian Girl
When the fair land of Poland was ploughed by the hoof
Of the ruthless invader, when Might,
With steel to the bosom, and flame to the roof,
Completed her triumph o'er Right,
In that moment of danger, when Freedom invoked
All the fetterless sons of her pride,
In a phalanx as dauntless as Freedom e'er yoked,
I fought and I bled by her side.
My birth is noble, unstained my crest
As is thine own: let this attest!
Pity for one in childhood torn
From kindred with whom she dwelt,
Ripened in after-years to love,
The fondest that heart hath felt,
Has made me, thus far, faith renew
With outlaws chance first linked me to.
As a foe, on this head let your hatred be piled,
But despise not one who hath so loved your child.
