Page:Bohemian legends and other poems.djvu/37

’Tis said, he played with wondrous skill;
From far and wide the people came;
They used to stand by Hradčan’s walls,
And speak of Dalibor and fame.

They listened, and they wept aloud;
They listened, and their blood would boil;
For in that simple song they heard
The anthem of their native soil.
The mountains caught it wailing back,
A song so strange, they shuddering heard;
The river took it, bore it back,
With a strange murmur that allured.

Each day the crowd became more dense,
To listen to that music wild;
They spake of country, and of God
They said the man was good and mild.
One day King Ladislav rode by;
He eyed them with a cruel look,
And when at length the cause he knew,
With rage and wrath he fairly shook.

He ordered that the violin
Should broken be on dungeon wall,
And laughingly he went next day,
And sneering said, “What can befall?”
But lo! beneath dark Hradčan’s wall
The people stand, and listening hear
The anthem of their native land,
Played by a hand that knows no fear.

Then, white with rage, the king said, “Kill
The man that dares to play that lay.”
And soon the bloody head was seen
But still the hand unseen did play.
The people, with a shuddering dread,
Knocked down the guards, and onward rushed;
They only found the broken wood—
The body, from which the blood gushed.