Adaptive translation provided by Peters Janis Vecrumba on Friday, August 02, 2002 Not as eloquent as the original... /Peters ------------------- Latvians, whatever lands you may come to, -- proclaim the name of Latvia! Never and nowhere in your life will you ever hear a more beautiful word than this word; whoever of you carries this word forth, shirk not, therefore, from spreading it far and wide; cease not to praise our country -- Fathers, inculcate it into your children; mothers, sing of it by your children's and grandchildren's cribs; but, if you are a child born in exile, -- relent not in ceaslessly interrogating your parents about this land. Let Latvia be in your thoughts and imaginings as a distant, beautiful island in the sea of the world; as you sail your course through life, always keep your prow pointing towards it. Day or night, dusk or dawn, -- keep it in your thoughts, utter its name, fall in love it ever more passionately. As the years pass, coming and going, -- proclaim the name of Latvia! Just remember! Where else will you ever find such a Spring, where the birches blaze against rose-colored skies, a whole fresh new stand of birches, as they are still budding; and nowhere else is their scent as such when they blossom. Where else do the ice flows resound, as in Latvia's rivers, as they lurch toward the sea.

Adaptive Translation provided by LKrievs, DailyTangents.com on Monday, August 12, 2002 Remember along fencerows, hills, and valleys - everywhere - maize lined in rows, stacks, and piles. Remember weeks on end, bringing in grains, preparing beets and cabbage, gathering vegetables. Thrashers humming like wasps day and night until the crops lay sheltered in the granary. The skies of fall, clear as amber, graced by fingers of clouds - a vastness tinged with rose, green and blue. Remember when working in the fields, you lifted your eyes to seek out the telltale signs of evening skies ... when the wide highroad in front of you cast from the ground reflecting rays of the setting sun. A foggy mist rises from the earth and embraces the soil within its silken veil. And then the trees begin to fade, yellow, redden, into a radiance of tones. Remember clear fall mornings, when the hoar-frost blossomed in meadows with snow. Eastern skies, yellow like wax, and in the west shimmers a wide rainbow. The heath-cock, confused in a lost conception of time, begins cooing as if in spring.