Explore "The Bondwoman's Dream" by Taras Shevchenko on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The slave with sickle / reaped the wheat, / Then wearily limped / among the stooks; / But not to rest, / Her little son she sought / Who wakened crying / in cool nest / among the sheaves.
His swaddled limbs unwrapped / she nourished him, / Then, dandling him a moment / fell asleep.
In dreams she saw / her little son, / Her Johnny, grown to man, / handsome and rich.
No lonely bachelor / but a married man / In freedom it seemed, / no longer the landlord's / but his own man.
And in their own joyous field / his wife and he / reaped their own wheat, / Their children brought their food.
The poor thing / laughed in her sleep, / Woke up -- a dream indeed it was.
She looked at Johnny, / picked him up and swaddled him, / And back to her allotted task; / Sixty stooks her stint.
Perhaps the last of the sixty it was: / God grant it.
And God grant / this dream of thine / may be fulfilled.