Chapter II

On evenings when through eddying skies the wind
Is whirling the swarming snow across the fields,
Grey-headed farmers sit in reckonings lost,
Near lamps from which a thread of smoke ascends.
The kitchen is unkempt and slatternly:
A string of dirty children by the stove
Gorge the spilt remnants of the evening meal;
Mangy and bony cats lick dishes clean;
Cocks make their beaks ring upon pewter plates;
Damp soaks the leprous walls; and on the hearth
Four flickering logs are twisting meagre shanks
Dying with listless tongues of pale red ray;
The old men's heads are full of bitter thoughts.
"For all the seasons unremitting toil,
With all hands at the plough a hundred years,
The farm has passed from father on to son,
And, with good years and bad, remains the same,
Jogging along upon the brink of ruin."
This is what gnaws and bites them with slow tooth.
So like an ulcer hate is in their hearts,
Patient and cunning hate with smiling face.
Their frank and loud good nature hatches rage;
Wickedness glimmers in their icy looks;
They stink of the rancorous gall that, age by age,
Their sufferings have collected in their souls.
Keen are they on the slightest gain, and mean;
Since they can not enrich themselves by work,
Stinginess makes their hearts hard, their hearts fetid;
And black their mind is, set on petty things,
And stupid and confounded before great;
As they had never raised their eyes unto
The sun, and seen magnificent sunsets
Spread on the evening, like a crimson lake.