Finally, she lifted her head. "After all, I remember something, and it is in the Slovak language. Once I learned this song about the sea, and when I sang it, thousands of people wept. It is a ballad about a shipwrecked vessel. Would you like to have me sing it?"
"Yes, yes," they all cried. Bacha had just arrived and sat among them. What a beautiful thing it is when the Creator puts such a voice in the human throat that no bird or instrument can equal it! You can hear everything in such a voice: the ringing of gold and silver, the moaning in the tops of the pines when they move in the wind; the babbling of the brooks as well as the roar of a great cataract—yes, everything!
"Master, the tempest is raging!
The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o'ershadowed with blackness,
No shelter or help is nigh;
"Carest Thou not that we perish?
How canst Thou lie asleep,
When each moment so madly is threat'ning
A grave in the angry deep?"
Sweetly, yet mysteriously and sadly, the notes of the song floated on the evening breeze down to the valley. Once, when the lady tried the song for the first time, thousands of people cried. Today only a small company of listeners cried, but I think that even the woods and the brooks and everything round wept also. Above all of them wept Bacha Filina. Palko who sat next to him laid his arm around his neck and cried with him. He understood him. Thus perished once the ship that carried Stephen. It sank in the terrible depths with him. In vain they waited, in vain they called. Uncle Filina would never see him again.
The boys did not dream, nor the helpers of Bacha, that anything existed as beautiful as that which was hidden in the lady's throat. You could almost hear the crashings of the breaking ship, and feel the hopelessness of the situation. It ended like sad, soft wailings of the perishing ones. The lady noticed the weeping her song had awakened. She realized that it would not be easy to stop it. Then she did something which that very morning she would have been in doubt that she would be able to do. She sang a song hidden in her memory from her old home, and which she had hated with her whole heart, because she could not forget it.
"My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary,
Saviour Divine!
Now hear me while I pray,
Take all my guilt away,
Oh, let me from this day
Be wholly Thine!
"May Thy rich grace impart
Strength to my fainting heart,
My zeal inspire!
As Thou hast died for me,
Oh, may my love to Thee,
Pure, warm, and changeless be,
A living fire!
"While life's dark maze I tread,
And griefs around me spread,
Be Thou my guide;
Bid darkness turn to day,
Wipe sorrow's tears away,
Nor let me ever stray
From Thee aside.
"When ends life's transient dream,
When death's cold, sullen stream
Shall o'er me roll;
Blest Saviour, then, in love,
Fear and distrust remove;
Oh, bear me safe above,
A ransomed soul!"