Page:An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry.pdf/48

 

And my blossoms within the questioning gaze of my eyes
Have died of a mystic pest.

 

"The Temple Builders" (1899).

 

WOE OF MAN

 

We, 'neath the spell of a hostile power are by faintness assailed,
Its evil relentless face in the eyes of the sun is aglow;
The instrument of thy labour was cast from our hands as they quailed,
On a boulder amid the quarries we sat us down in our woe.

We wiped the sweat from our brows, with Death we were speaking.Amid
A motionless heaven aglow, 'mid ironical glinting of ore,
And e'en as a child lays its head in its mother's lap, so we hid
Our weary thoughts in creation's grief that endures evermore.

And then in our own magic power, the mystery of our birth,
In the guerdon of our renown that is hidden, our sorrows we found;