2. FISHPONDS.
Our fishponds are as moulded silver shed
With streaks of shadow under clouded skies,
Amid green herbage of the meadow spread
Like to the country's gentle, tender eyes.
Here pines the snipe in rushes near the shores,
Here is the teal, whose greenish plumage plays
In colours of the rainbow when he soars
Far off amid the sun's bespangled blaze;
Cooler are meadows where the sweet-flag grows,
And with the after-math its fragrance blends;
By wavelets cooled, the air in ripples flows,
And something sighs, like grief that never ends.
"From My Country" (1893).
3. SMETANA'S QUARTETTE "FROM MY LIFE."
(i.)
Out of the concert-hall, as I were drunken,
Amid the bustle of the throng I staggered . . .
The seats clattered, and the lamp-bulbs stifled
Their bluish glimmer. Mingled fragrances
Floated above the jostle of living creatures
From shawls in which the ladies wrapped themselves. . .
Still in the practice-room the pizzicato
Of a violin sobbed tenderly near by,
