An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Brotherhood of Believers

For other English-language translations of this work, see Brotherhood of Believers.

Brotherhood of Believers

OUR ponderings have bathed in fiery waves of a sacred summer,Which kindles azure of souls with glow of all August-tides and ripening of all stars. And when they had cleansed away their grievous tokens of earth, they rose up in purity of earliest radiances.And fathomed potent blisses of time: its breath was sweet with hope of the deadAnd with baffling tempest seethed therein budding burgeons of all gardens to be.

Days that were void of mornings cast lights upon us from afar, like time-old echoes of yearning,We were frenzied with frenzy of love, that was an orison to the Highest.From our lips trickled its sweetness and yet they burned with sacred thirst,Our eyes drank thereof from brotherly eyes and to our brothers’ gazes gave it to drinkAnd in quivering of an unknown blood-kinship it chimed to us with riddling music.

Our dreams were merged in a single dreaming, and myriad trees of a single forest rustled,When by their tremor the boughs one to the other give tidings of a single wind from unknown oceans.Upon our meadows lay fragrance of all blossoms, sweetened into a single welded accord,And radiance of our souls, fused into a single flaring, garbed the invisible with coloursAnd the voice of all our united wishes caused powers to blossom unto us as marvellous gardens.

And we culled our rapture, like grapes on a single bewildering cluster,That burst at the touch in the spurting-forth of a single wine: Apples from a single tree, which when cleft, are aflush with blood they share with ours,Kisses of a single night, wherein souls sing of death and coming lives,In a single enkindling of lips, age-long infirm with bliss of that single burning contact.Polar Winds (1897)

This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1929, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 95 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse