Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/63

“We want to quench and trample out the soul,
All memories of the days ere they were slaves;
To dance the can-can in their nation’s face,
Our foulness to defile their fathers' graves.
When their sweet tongue shall be cut out and gone,
The mothers will bear sons for us alone”.

A new, a sensual serfdom now begins;
A new tithe comes, the people's hearts to grieve.
The little pupil weeps, thrown out of school;
Spiders their webs over Museum weave;
The precious books are spoiled by moths and mould
Which good men dying left to us of old.

The aged men are dying, and they see
Ruin all round, no truth, no hope in life.
The young apostatize, some swift, some slow;
Even the strong give o'er the endless strife.
Only a handful now keep up the fight;
Only a few lights burn amid the night.

Then suddenly, from out the ocean waves
A giant woman with majestic face
Proudly appears, her white robe glittering bright;
Her eyes, like flames upon the altar place.
Her breast, like sun-smit marble, fair to see:
“Oh ye forsaken children, come to me!”

“Oh, come I know your bundles are but poor,
And from your fatherland no gems you bring;
The ruthless wrath of murderers drives you forth
From your ancestral soil to which you cling.
No gifts I offer, only this reward:
Time for free work, for human rights regard!”

The people, so disgraced in their own land,
Lift up proud heads sice o'er the sea they came;
And there he speaks aloud who here was mute,
He glories there in what he here thought shame.
He knows himself, in light Columbia gives,
Surprised, he finds that only now he lives.

Cheer to my brethren! Their harsh stepmother
Drove them from their dear huts, their native sod.
Thou, oh Columbia, hast rent their chains,
And lifted them to manhood, heaven, God!
Oh, land of Christopher, may Christ repay
What for my brethren poor you do to-day.

My sons, my sisters, oh, beloved race!
I from far-off prison speak to you,
Oh, sacred, sacred tops of Tatra’s heights!
Nothing is like them, ’neath the heaven blue.
Search all this bad, sad world from strand to strand,
You’ll find naught fairer than the Slovak land!

So, while in stern imprisonment I weep,
My voice I raise to you, my countrymen;
Oh, to your words and songs be ever true,
And, if it may be, come, oh, come again!
If not, yet still in heart with us remain!
I cease; The jailer shakes the clanking chain.