Renowned musician, freeman of the world, / and yet our kinsman everywhere you go,
have you a cadence for the ailing land / to set to strings that play in the marrow?
Have you a cadence, shaker of great hearts? / Have you a cadence that no grief defeats?

Centuries old, life-loads of fate and sin / have paralyzed and overborne us;
dispirited, the race lived on the chain, / saving itself by acting spineless.
And if sometimes it boiled to a release / it was the struggle of a fever case.

Then came a finer age and the return / of hope, a dawn lit by our longing,
recovery, sweet torments in the brain, / new life for dead desires, sick yearning.
We are aflame again to claim the land; / we are once more prepared to shed our blood.

Each pulse-beat we can feel within our hearts; / at its sacred name our blood surges;
we suffer all its torments, all its smarts; / at each disgrace a new flame urges;
upon its throne we bid it to be great, / happy and strong within its simple hut.

Great scholar of the land where grievance grows, / where the heart of a world is beating,
where now at last the sun dares to arise / with the purple and red blood mingling,
where, as the people's ocean reached full tide, / the domineering furies disappeared;

and in their stead, walking in whitest robes / of purity, step peace and diligence,
and in resplendent mansions art unfolds / new-found and sacred immanence;
and as a thousand brains are sanctified / the nation toils with one tremendous hand;

Great Universal Master, make for us / another song about days gone by,
destiny in the keyboard of our voice / through battle's thunder forcing its cry,
and on the flood of the earth-shattering sound / let trumpet-blasts triumphantly resound.

Sing out a song so in their deepest graves / our ancestors are compelled to stir,
so each immortal soul awaking proves / new life to descendants, made aware
of blessings in their Magyar fatherland. / They know that traitor sons are shamed and banned.

And if grim times and twilight overtake, / let a faint murmur on muted strings
be by your utmost art made to invoke / soughing breezes over autumn leaves,
suggesting to our hearts with lulling sound / those ancient sites where sorrow packs the ground.

Reflected on the manly arms we take / shall rise that pale lady, pensive Grief,
and the full tragedy of Mohács make / its repetition for our belief,
and when the internecine scourge has drawn our tears / that sorrow shall do much for present fears.

And if you waken love of Fatherland, / which holds the present in its embrace,
and at the same time takes the time at hand / and in the past a fine remembrance,
sing to us with your full concerted strings / so that into our hearts your fine sound sings;

and in awakened passion's purity / trials of daring should be meted,
and our great sons should diligently see / that weak and strong must move united,
and like one man the enduring nation stand / with arms of bronze to hold the strife-torn land.

And if they were our bones, even the stones / should shake into a sacred gladness;
and as the fretting wave on Danube runs / our blood shall make its heated progress;
and where both great and sorry days have passed / this soil shall throb, irascible at last;

and if you hear through your resounding strain / the Fatherland awaken to your theme,
which all the people with their teeming tongues / sing with you when their courage grows extreme,
join with us all and let us say: Thank God / this nation keeps the soul of great Árpád.