Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/247

 

Above me overhead rings the clatter of hoofs,
The count is riding through the hamlet, the countess with dainty hand
Urges on the horses and her rosebud face is smiling.

I dig, the mattock I upraise;
My wife, livid-faced, trudges to the castle,
Craving for bread, when the milk has dried up in her breasts.

Good-hearted is my lord,
Of yellow masonry is his castle,
Beneath the castle is dinning and bursting the Ostravice.
By the gates two black bitches are scowling.

Wherefore she went to the castle to pester and and beg?
Grows rye on my lord's field for the drab of a pitman?
At Hrušov I dig and at Michalkovice.

What will betide my sons, what will betide my daughters,
On the day when they drag out my corpse from the pit?
My sons shall go on digging and digging,
At Karvinna digging;
And my daughters,—how fares it with daughters of pitmen?