Nature - Otakar Březina

Hidden springs were playing music and my day its song thereto was chanting,

On the melancholy shores.

The grief of bygone life, from whence I came was wafted to me from the fragrance,

And from the converse of the trees and from the heavy drone of insects o'er the waters,

And there lay whole centuries, betwixt my hands, that blossoms plucked, and them

Betwixt my countenance and a mystic world,

That in a thousand questioning glances in my spirit mutely gazed.

The clouds grew dim as sank the sun, and of the winds my spirit asked,

Are the clouds approaching hither, or are they departing hence?

The winds were mute, in a submissive mirror on themselves the waters looked,

And the stars, like waning fires in frigid waves of gleaming oceans,

Seethed and murmured over me, invisible:

Their light is dying only at the advent of a light still greater,

Of a light still greater, greater.

---

Otakar Březina [Václav Jebavý] (1868–1929) Czech Republic

Translated by Paul Selver

Source: An Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry, translated by Paul Selver, Henry J. Drane, 1912