35.

Core of page 35 (Song 16): This is a classic Ukrainian folk-style lament in which the speaker mourns the irreversible loss of youth (“літа молоді” — young years/summers). The song opens with a direct echo of the previous piece (“This is how my dear one has spoken / Why have you not loved me faithfully”), then shifts into the main theme: time has slipped away while the speaker was busy with life’s labors, and now they desperately wish to recapture or at least briefly revisit those vanished youthful days.

Central theme — the fleeting nature of youth and the pain of belated longing: The entire song is built around a single, aching metaphor:

• Brown oxen that “will not plow” any longer and have already been “harnessed / used up” represent the heavy work of adult life that has consumed the speaker’s prime years.
• The speaker then calls for black horses to be harnessed so they can chase after those same “young years,” catch up with them on a “cedar bridge” (a symbolic threshold between past and present), and beg them to “turn back… come visit me as a guest.”

The imagery is deeply folkloric — agricultural labor, swift horses, a wooden bridge — yet the emotion is universal: nostalgia mixed with quiet despair. Youth cannot actually return; the best the speaker can hope for is a momentary, ghostly visit. That bittersweet wish is the emotional heart of the page.

The tone is melancholic and reflective, typical of early-20th-century Carpathian or Galician song-poetry. It blends personal regret (the “Mila”/beloved motif) with a broader meditation on time’s one-way flow, making the short song feel both intimate and archetypal.

In short: page 35 captures the universal ache of realizing too late that youth has passed you by, and the futile yet deeply human desire to call it back for just one more evening.