Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/253

 

Below are uplifted the arms of the miners,
The blacksmiths are pounding the iron in its redness,
On the fields that stretch onwards at Krásná, at Pražma,
Women bow down in the glow of the sunshine.
I roused myself up from this peaceable people,
Even whose cradle was guarded by serfdom,
Even whose childhood was fettered by bondage,
Ill-plighted scion of miners and blacksmiths;
I sped me from Ostrava, Witkowitz, Baška,
From Frydlaat, from Orlová, Dombrová, Lazy,
I flung in the pit my hammer and mattock,
I left in the field my mother and sister,
I snatched from its hook my grandfather's fiddle,
My tune I began.

Once, haply, resounded
Strains of delight from it, youth and affection.
Three strings were rended.

I flung from the church the foreigner's preacher,
From the foreigner's school I beat out the master;
By night I enkindled my woods they had taken;
The hare I entrapped in my overlord's coppice.
They dragged me to Těšín, God tangled my senses.
'Neath Lysá I play to the goats and the squirrels,
Beneath the red ash-tree to sparrows that perch there.
From hamlet to hamlet in heat I have wandered,