Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/209

Rh darkling in the distance. It will come, all the plain, with its waste lands and its road-tracks will be covered with their white, protruding bones, lavishly washed with their kazák blood, and strewn with shattered wagons and splintered swords and spears: far afield will be strewn the scalp-locked heads, with downward-drooping moustaches; the eagles will swoop down, and tear out their kazák eyes. But there is great good in this so widely and boldly broadcast bivouac of death! Not a single magnanimous deed will perish, and the kazák glory will not be lost, like a tiny grain of powder from a gun-barrel. He will come, the bandura-player with grey beard falling upon his breast will come, and perhaps the old man still full of ripe, manly strength, though his head is white with years, eloquent by the spirit, will utter ringing, mighty words of them. And their glory shall resound through all the world, and all who shall be born thereafter shall speak of them; for the word of power is borne afar, reverberating like a booming, brazen bell, in which the maker has mingled much pure silver, that its beautiful sound may be wafted far and wide through cities, huts, palaces and villages, summoning all men, without exception, to hold orisons.