The Death of Smail-aga Tchengetch is counted the finest poem in the Serbian language. The author, Ivan Mazuranic, who died in 1890, was a Croatian.
The plot of the poem is briefly as follows: The scene is laid in Montenegro, or Tzernagora, as the people of the Balkans call it, in the days when the Turks held all the surrounding lands, and cruelly oppressed them. Smail-aga Tchengetch, one of the most inhuman of Turkish tyrants, had murdered many honorable Serbians and also an old Turk who plead in their behalf. Aroused by this action, and band of Serbians and Montenegrins gathered to avenge the death of their kinsmen, and were joined by the son of the murdered Turk, Novitsa.
The selection given here is from the middle of the poem:
THE TROOP
A small troop gathered
In Cetinje, in Tzernagora.
The band was small but it was brave;
It had at least a hundred men,
Heroes, not one of whom was called:
For his great height, or his brave looks,
But chosen for his dauntless heart;
Heroes they were who would attack
Not each one ten, who thus might flee,
But each one two, whom he could kill;
Heroes who for the cross would die,—
The cross with which they signed themselves,
For this dear cross, and Liberty.
Brave troop! which was not gathered there
As any other troop had been.
In other places one might hear:
294
