Stay Here Poem by Aleksa Santic

Stay here!… The sun that shines in a foreign place,
Will never warm you like the sun in your own;
The bread has a bitter taste there
Where one has no one, not even a brother.

Who would find a better mother than one's own,
And your mother is this country;
Take a look upon the limestones and the field,
Everywhere are the graveyards of your great-grandfathers.

For this country they were noble giants,
Lights who knew how to defend it,
You, too, should stay in this country,
And give the fund of your blood for it.

As a deserted bough, when the autumn winds
Tear its leaves and slash it with ice;
Your motherland would be without you,
Like a mother crying for her child.

Do not let tears run down her face,
Return to it in the world's embrace;
Live in order to be able to die
On its battlefield where glory comes to greet you!

Everybody knows and loves you here,
And nobody will recognize you there;
Even the barren limestones are better here
Than the flowers in the fields of a foreign place.

Everybody shakes your fraternal hand here -
In the foreign land, wormwood blooms for you;
For us, amongst the limestones, everything connects:
Name, language, brotherhood, and holy blood.

Stay here!… The sun that shines in a foreign place
Will never warm you like the sun in your own -
The bread has a bitter taste there
Where one has no one, not even a brother…