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Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/300

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JAROSLAV VRCHLICKÝ

JAROSLAV VRCHLICKÝ.

1. ECLOGUE VII.

How can there be a heart by hope unthrilled?
Hark to the sound
Of black-birds; nests around
With mighty drops of dew are filled.

The forest-lovers in calm, rock-strewn ways
How joyously were beaming!
Their dreaming
Was knit by doves amid their smiling lays.

Quoth they: "Who can us here behold?"
Then sped
The sun, and quivering shed
Upon their clinging lips his gold.

"Who knows of all the vows that we have uttered?"
Then from a flower drew nigh
A butterfly
And 'mid their hair entangled fluttered.

Who would of sun, of butterfly beware?
For see,
Beneath each darkening tree
A very idyll they prepare.

"Eclogues and Songs" (1880).