An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Roundelay of Hearts
For other English-language translations of this work, see Roundelay of Hearts.
Roundelay of Hearts
EVER with equalRaising and sinking of pinionsIn postures higher and higherRepeatedAbove the burden of earthPrevails the glory of soaring.Spirit voices are chanting the paths of grace,Like birds encircling their whilom nests,In magical gardens of enchantments,O mystical husbandman!
Hear ye the secret seething of blood? Simmer of ripening fermentDazing the senses? Feverish chiming in darkness of hives?Grievous music of hearts, attuned by the ages like stringsFor starry harmony?Wailing of strings too tensely wound, rended apart?And scouring all worlds, the fiery cadence,Compassing seraphic harmony?Baffling remembrance of myriads in glorious embrace,Ere this visible cosmos blossomed with heavy splendourAmid infinities?Signals of return, awaited by all beings of earth,Mustering the brotherhood of huntsmenIn mocking labyrinths deep in the forest of dreams?In the grief of multitudes over bloodstained fields,In the anguished blenching of usurpers,In the secret victories of woman,Like flames on a thousand-armed lustre, At every opening of doors, by which the awaited approach,In a gust of spirit-musicHearts are aquiver.
Hail to you arrivals!Vintages of our most potent grapesMark the path for you!Black, charred traces of our fires,Where we have sat beneath the sparkling of heavenly lights,In silence of night, singing of your advent;Hallowed tokens,Which in the language of nations destined to perishWe have graven on vertical scutcheons of rock,Ruined arches of triumphal gatesOf our rulers,Temple-obelisks hidden beneathDeposit of ages.—Because of the secret of grief, of death, and of new birthBlissful is life!
Because of the invisible presence of the great and holy among our kinWho wander in our midst in gardens of lightAnd from the farness of all ages converse with our soulsGraciously,Blissful is life!
Because of the kingly gratitude of the vanquished,Who trustingly lays his head upon the bosom Where thy radiance sings more potently,Because of embrace of foes in enchantment of our loftiest season,Blissful is life!
Because of celestial fragrance of newly-unfolded blossomsIn rapture of song, in glory of kisses,Blissful is life!
Because of the starry spirit-gazeBegirding earth on all sides together;Crystal solitudes of the poles, of earliest ages, of ancient mountains, of statute, of number;Silent oceans of blossoming light, of happiness, harvests; and night-fall;Feverish tropical gardens of blood, of thirst, and of princely dreamings;The burden of all fruits ripened by suns visible and invisibleAnd that clamour for tempests and culling;
Seething of bee-swarms before dispersing; contests of nations through centuries;Harmonious soaring of earth in the splendid curve of its orbit, even amid earthquakes;Azure mirrors of heaven even above the isles of them accursed by leprosy;Chalk mountain-ranges where oceans once thunderedAnd where once again they shall thunder,Sparkling of insects in forests of grass,Sparkling of worlds in infinities,Sparkling of thought in spirit-herbages of the unknown. Because of the delicate smiling of eyes undeceived by the gigantic Hallucination,Blissful is life!
Because of blood that gushes from age to age out of the sinewy armsUpraising the load of the past like hinges of prison-portals!Because of the sublime cause of the joy of myriads!Because of the secret price of the death of all brethren who died for us—And all who have been, through all centuries, upon the whole expanse of earthHave died for us—Because of all crops, sown by a myriad hands and yet ungarnered!Because of the alluring gleam and perils of all unvoyaged oceans!Because of every span of earth that is destined as the battle-field of our victories,And is therefore secretly marked with blossoms and gold!Because of all beauty yet unkindled upon countenances,Unatoned guilt unbestowed upon brethren, kisses still waiting for lips,Blissful is life!
Because of the outcry of the desolate heartWhen it exults from its anguish like a straying birdThat has found a singing multitude of brethrenBlissful is life!
Because of gusts, cataclysms, tempests! Paroxysms of love and desire! Warfare of spirits!Ceaseless ardour and thirst of uniting endeavour!Because of our mystical sharingIn labour of all conquerors,Who mark all happenings as a flock for the shearingWith the branded token of their destiny,Ruling over ardour and sorrow of myriadsAnd dispatching death to their fields as a gleanerAnd to their quarrier as a hewer of stone for their building—As a multitude in amazement gazing to a single pointThey leave the ages behind them;And kingdoms, like ships, upon which mariners have leapt from the shore,Sway beneath their poise even to capsizing—Because of the mighty bliss of being mauled as a billowBy the surge of a majestical ocean of brethrenAnd of spurting up in the crest of foam like a sprig of white blossomAt the buffeting against cliffs of the promised land.
Because of hidden spring-tides of harmonySet in the woven fabric of all thingsLike butterfly-wings of the opalescent azure at evening,Asparkle with the scaliness of stars,Blissful is life!
Because of the approaching advent of the radiant mortal of mystery,Who alone among myriad brethren that shall be and have been,Conqueror over space, Shall change the earth from pole to pole after thy sacred willAnd by thought that from submissive sunsHas learnt deftness and dances and tunes,Shall sit in thy secret councilAmong princes of the cosmos—Blissful is life!The Hands (1901)
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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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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.
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