Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/133

Rh upon the threshold of an immortal Walhalla, but those despairing, those uncalmable in their grief, those dull and anguished, when mourners cast a handful of earth upon the coffin, and from the spades of the grave-diggers the black, blood-soaked earth sinks into the dark pit.

The kingdom of earth bas been entwined with heaven by invisible strings, invisible hands are straying mournfully upon this celestial harp, and they weep and lament with the woeful moaning of those daughters of Jerusalem, to whom the Redeemer exclaimed in supremest scorn of death. "Weep not for me, but for you and your children"—and yet they weep and lament, despondently, not divining that the tomb will open and from the dark vault, the spirit of the nation in new splendour and victorious magnificence, will soar aloft to a new life.

For the grave could not be filled in,—endlessly, endlessly, masses of earth, soaked by holy blood of martyrs, rolled upon the coffin, and yet the grave remained open,—the lid of the coffin trembles, quivers, opens, burst by the giant breast, which is still alive and teeming with strength,—and the bells boom and boom, flung to and fro by the tempest of vengeance, of requital, of a distant hope fervid with victory.

The contest which has long since ebbed away upon earth, is continued somewhere in superearthly spaces in a savage hurricane, which may 9