Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/254

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In heat and in cold, ’mid snow and 'mid rainfall. I have played behind hedges and played beneath windows; Only a single string has my fiddle, The heavy sigh of the seventy thousand, That have perished 'neath Lysá, hard by Bohumín; They have perished amid their wrenched-away pinewoods, In the wrenched-away Bezkyds slowly they perish, They in Šumbark have perished, in Lutyň have perished, In Datyne perish, in Dětmarovice, They in Poremba perished, they in Dombrová perish. A stirring has come o'er the seventy thousand; Long ago on the Olza was pitched an encampment, Far have we yielded beyond the Lucyna, Crossing to Morava, beyond the Ostravice, A nation of silence, a stock that is gone.

As David in front of the ark, so before them Like a mad snake to the sound of the reed-pipe, Doth dance the quaint bard of the seventy thousand, The Bezkyd Don Quixote, with juniper spear-shaft, Armour of moss and a helmet of pine-cones,