O swallow, gentle swallow,

Thou lovely bird of spring!

Say, whither art thou flying

So swift on gleaming wing?

Fly to my birthplace, Ashdarag,

The spot I love the best;

Beneath my father’s roof-tree,

O swallow, build thy nest.

There dwells afar my father,

A mournful man and grey,

Who for his only son’s return

Waits vainly, day by day.

If thou shouldst chance to see him,

Greet him with love from me;

Bid him sit down and mourn with tears

His son’s sad destiny.

In poverty and loneliness,

Tell him, my days are passed:

My life is only half a life,

My tears are falling fast.

To me, amid bright daylight,

The sun is dark at noon;

To my wet eyes at midnight

Sleep comes not, late or soon.

Tell him that, like a beauteous flower

Smit by a cruel doom,

Uprooted from my native soil,

I wither ere my bloom.

Fly on swift wing, dear swallow,

Across the quickening earth,

And seek in fair Armenia

The village of my birth!