Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/296

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son of motion, The son of radiance and airy spaces, From his youth in the eddies of life, He, whose heart was bleeding With tenderness and with manly strength, When in the night he stood musing Over the town that has perished, He heard this funeral chant: O miserere, O miserere, Woe worth the land that has perished

Over the silenced homesteads It sang in a graveyard-stillness: O miserere, O miserere The weary, unventuresome and humble Have withdrawn them from life Here in over-eloquent muteness Is the desert of Europe with artless beauty The grass withers, that her bondsmen May be bedded the softer In days and in nights of hunger How rich here the waxing of pine-woods: There is need of coffins for all the people Upon the pigmy acres Is reared only the tillage Of a time of faintness and death