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ANTONÍN SOVA.
39

6. ONCE AGAIN SHALL WE RETURN …

Once again shall we return musingly, where so potent
Was a blossom's fragrance, that it lured us from the pathway, when in dusky silver
Evening floated over rivers, and once again shall we return
Where we heard a song from windows, which looked on to muteness of gardens.

And once more shall we seek out the one path and the one hill-side thicket
So utterly radiant with autumn, in such a revel of colours,
And we shall search after splintered strains of an echo,
After the soft and buoyant footstep, that perchance left secret traces.

The soul with memories graven upon it will pour forth into the grass
Such a bounty of lyrical balm in a resinous trickling,
And will steep its lofty and darksome branches in autumnal sunshine,

Its slender stem will range duskward in vanishing clouds,
All in a single moment, upon the twilit pathway
And at the sunset hour, which so wrings the hapless heart …
“Once again shall we return” (1900).


7. THE SON OF MOTION.

The son of motion, thus hearing,
The son of radiance pondered with sorrow:
Wherefore doth Europe passionately embrace
Only the soothly alive,
Only the venturesome, strong and self-certain