Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/356

 N the cemetery at Bartos’s house, consequently with Staza and the grave-digger, were Frank and old Loyka. They conducted together their modest household, Frank busying himself about the management of all outside the house, and Staza devoting herself to domestic duties.

Frank and Staza had reached an age when life wishes to burst forth in the song of the sky-lark. Where such an eye directs its gaze, the bud unfolds, the rose blossoms. The sky is draped in a garment of transparent blue, every star has its own language, every ray of moonlight brings a message down to earth. The earth is draped in a garment of green, and this green is full of hope, the birds sing songs about it, the leaves of the wood murmur about it. The garish light of day trenches far upon the depths of night, and night, with its own golden speech of dawn, trenches far upon the day itself. The young heart reels between waking and dreaming; presentiment and uncertainty contend about it, the presentiment of joy above which there is none; uncertainty which is half a certainty because the world is so fair.

Once Staza sat upon the grave of her mother: she did not sing “Oh, rest in peace”, either to her mother or to the other dead. But she felt weary and oppressed, she knew not why, and then she interpreted the oppression to be sorrow for never having known her mother. And she would most gladly have delved a fresh grave beside her mother’s grave and laid herself in it, not by any means as a corpse, but that she might again tap at her mother’s coffin and tell her something which she had not yet breathed even to herself.

At this moment came Frank to her, and when he stood beside her, he was for the first time at a loss for a word. Everything that he had said to her hitherto seemed insufficient. He wished to say much more, and therefore said nothing.

The dawn of life shot its crimson streamers before him, he had his soul full of spring, full of sap and beauty, and when he wished to express it all he cast his eyes down to the ground and his tongue seemed parched with a long drought. He had his soul full of sunlight, and when he wished to reveal it in its full brightness he had tears in his eyes.

And when he had stood thus a long time and could not find anything to say, and yet wished to say something—he found