Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/234

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210
JAN KASPROWICZ

It flows to the flame-lit crags,
To the chasm-crowning ways,
Where the sight of the secrets of God
Is before us in tumult ablaze.

It speeds to the eddies of light
That coil from the sun's gold beams,
Where by the shoreless spaces
Yearning in solitude dreams.

The wind whips the orphaned pines,
Mists in the rain unroll.
Ho, mountains, enchanted mountains,
The yearning of my soul.

2.

What is life worth without ecstasy's hours,
Void of those frenzies that men in their coldness.
Christen transgression and overboldness?
Such life is as autumn-tide sodden with showers.

There is no sunlight, that shimmers and glows,
There is no blossom, that fragrances spreads,
Only a wind o'er the desolate beds,
In a piercing monotony blows.

But life is like unto spring-tide, when love
And suffering both in its ken it enfolds,
When it plucks at the stars in the azure above.
Glitter and warmnese and fragrant smells
Are the bounteous guerdons that this life holds—
All things, whose fountain from raptures of God upwells.