Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Polish-Greek-Belgian-Hungarian).djvu/36

34 throat. A moment more he controlled himself, and read further:

O Holy Lady, who guardest bright Chenstohova,

Who shinest in Ostrobrama and preservest

The castle town Novgrodek with its trusty people,

As Thou didst give me back to health in childhood,

When by my weeping mother placed beneath Thy care

I raised my lifeless eyelids upward,

And straightway walked unto Thy holy threshold,

To thank God for the life restored me,—

So by a wonder now restore us to the bosom of our birthplace."

The swollen wave broke through the restraint of his will. The old man sobbed, and threw himself on the ground; his milk-white hair was mingled with the sand of the sea. Forty years had passed since he had seen his country, and God knows how many since he heard his native speech; and now that speech had come to him itself, it had sailed to him over the ocean, and found him in solitude on another hemisphere,—it so loved, so dear, so beautiful! In the sobbing which shook him there was no pain,—only a suddenly aroused immense love, in the presence of which other things are as nothing. With that great weeping he had simply implored forgiveness of that beloved one, set aside because he had grown so old, had become so accustomed to his solitary rock, and had so forgotten it that in him even longing had begun to disappear. But