Page:Modern Czech Poetry, 1920.djvu/85

 

And on their rigid face thy peaceful glea
Quivers like to a tear,
That merges every brawl in mighty concord.

All sleeps: the hill-side's blackness
Like a bear's fur is bristling in the void.
Upon the leaves and thickets
The moon's white streaks are scattered here and there,
As at a bear's rough fur
Were clutching the white fingers of a hunter.
God is this hunter: by its mighty jaw-bone
He seized the monster night-gloom, whence dismay
And dread were scattered; then he took his spear,
The moonray golden-clad,
And thrust it in the beast's grim fangs, till, when
His blood gushed forth as redness of the dawn,
His hundred hounds, the freshening eastern winds,
Lap at it there; and earth begins to smile,
Aquiver for the morning.

Haply sole waking creature,
I probe sad musings of the cloudy heaven.
Upon my rocky cavern
The moon-light tapped, and I was roused from slumber
To greet the earth and speak soft words to her,
That her long boundless journey may not tire her,
To let her know, that o'er her
Is borne an angel with a spreading wing
To hold her in her fall,
Yea, e'en that God himself would clasp her round,
Like to a white and sorely smitten dove,
And in his garment's border
Would lay her to the rest for which she yearns.

Often meseems that I
At times can hear the heavy gates of heaven
Opening wide and closing once again,