Ferdinand Písecký

“ The poet’s real name is Ferdinand Písecký. He has just left this country to return to Russia, after delivering a course of lectures in the principal Bohemian settlements in the United States on the Russian revolution of which he was a witness.
It is one and the same,
Even as then,—three centuries agone:
Scattered the flock, in thousand decaying
On mountains, broad fields, fallen in alien service
Amid the fountain of life, already grown turbid,
Oozed loathsome, corroding venom
Wtih heady current, set astir by white hands
Of adept and wily hangmen. ”

“ The present fate of the Bohemian nation who with great difficulties awoke from a state of deadly agony to a new life, resembles the fateful period after the Battle of the White Mountain. For the Czechs and Slovaks it is again a question of extirpation by the Habsburgs and the Germans. And again a great Bohemian fled abroad, Thomas G. Masaryk, who is working for the salvation of his nation in exile. ”

“ Base traffickers . . .
Letting a runnel of uncomely slime
Taint our life’s fountain, grown already turbid,
Thou rangest the wide world like a mighty Amos,
Thou bearest in thy heart our whole distress. ”