Page:Modern Czech Poetry, 1920.djvu/67

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49

KAREL TOMAN.

1. THE SENTIMENTAL CAROUSERS.

Comrade thou of melancholy,
Thou, my vagrant spirit's friend,
Underneath what sky hereafter
Will our lives of beggary end?

Our annals, silvery and drab,
Within what land, when will they wane?
When will the music that we cherished
Be wafted in a last refrain?

O, bygone love an echo rouses
In the heart's chords again. No more!
Hail to ourselves, to earth, to dreaming!
A requiem to the days of yore.

In golden wine the tyrant mood
Of memory we shall immerse.
And we shall sing, and shall forget
Our love, our fury and our curse.

“Torso of Life” (1901).

7. THE SUN-DIAL.

A house in ruins. On the crannied walls
Moss gluttonously crawls
And lichens in a spongy rabble.

The yard is rank with nettle-thickets
And toad-flax. In the poisoned water-pit
Rats have a drinking-lair.