Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/95



scene I was gazing at looked like one of Holbein's immortal sketches. A sketch forming the nucleus of the cycle, "The Dance of Death," representing an old villager who is ploughing the hard soil at sunset, while death is urging on his horse. My villager and his plough were likewise floundering along through the clayey soil, and above them the invisible envoy of destruction appeared to be creeping Only the landscape was different. In Holbein's picture we see clusters of shady trees, roofs of numerous dwellings, picturesque bridle-paths, the turret of a stone-built church, and, on the horizon, the curving line of a mountain chain. A rich, southern nature, full of diversity and solemnity. The setting sun is beautiful and its beams are extended fan-shaped over the horizon, sending their shafts beyond the mountains and trees.

But the Mazurian plain was wearisome and humdrum. The earth, as if it consisted of