Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/117

Rh blood," of that land, of which Pope Paul V. said, when a Polish delegation asked him for relics of saints: "Take a morsel of your earth—that in itself is a relic, for it is soaked with the blood of the holiest martyrs!"

And how fervently must Chopin have loved that land, when he always carried at his breast a fragment of it, carefully sewn up in a small wallet.

Before our eyes the broad-boughed willows ascend from the patches of autumn mist by those waysides, where crouch misery and sadness, affliction and sorest distress, and the memory of griefs for which the source of tears has dried, and heavy languishing all this for sunken splendour, for unavailing sacrifices, for battles which were not fought out

And in the sallow moonlight the cross-roads are ghastly with the wide-opened arms of crosses, the swamps are haunted by the flickering souls of the damned, around stretch the bare fields of stubble, and in the slender poplars which form the framework of some isolated grave, the wind sings the dismal ballad of the mistress who slew the master; from the bottom of an abysmal lake the sprites arise and sing treacherous and alluring melodies, and, enticed by the flickering will-o'-the-wisp, man ventures on to broad fen-lands, upon which he shall find his mournful grave. 8