Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/45

  We’ll come! Mother Earth, you are so small, Forgive us if ungrateful we seem. We chain our thoughts to the lightning above, Our feet speed with the power of steam.

We’ll come! Our spirits higher soar, Our blood beats with an unquenched thirst; With a feverish longing for far off worlds, Tis a wonder our hearts do not burst.

We will come nearer, higher still To the ends of the world we shall see. We strike at our bars, we, the lions at heart, We’ll shatter the bars and be free.

Our waving flag of red with its neighboring field of white Whipping against its staff with a sweeping, unchecked might; One moment madly flying, its wings are reaching far, Then in a flash it shivers, and huddles against its bar. Two colors flashing by in an everchanging race, Until we hardly dare these colors to embrace. Look! Look! There in the height sweeps a blotch of crimson hue And in its reddish wake, sputters a white churned foam; A sweeping gust of wind brings another phase in view, A drift of fallen snow, topped with a bloody dome. Now it appears as if a white-winged dove flew by To be swallowed by the flames, whose hungry tongues reach high. New thoughts arise and die; while I, with bated breath, Gaze at the color of life blend with the color of death.

Two gayly flowered goblets I raise high to the light, In one a wine of red; in one a wine of white. These colors, these two lights, may they ever keep aflame, To lead us through peace and battles to a pinnacle of fame. If humanity should waver like a mighty heaving sea, Then like the ocean coral, the peaceful Czechs should be. And if humanity, like an Alpine range, should soar, The Czechs should be a Mont Blanc, and rise for evermore.