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In presenting this Czech "Romantic Poem" to the English reading public, I feel the need of stressing the musical rather than the poetic beauty of the work. As one reads and re-reads the musical lines of this work in the original, with the recurring refrains of repetition, one is reminded of an operatic libretto. I hope that I have succeeded in keeping some of this operatic atmosphere in the translation, for Prof. J. R. Hulbert, who read the earliest draft of this translation, remarked at the conclusion of the first intermezzo:

The poet was severely censured for this same lack of concreteness, for that hazy emotional rather than concretely pictorial effect, and this apparent defect no doubt retarded the recognition of the poet's true greatness. But in criticizing the poet, let us bear in mind that he had no precedent in his own language to fall upon, that he is, in a marked sense, the founder of Czech poetry  that the phraseology is of his own invention  that he is a pioneer and as such, not as thorough as his followers could be The musical element of Macha's masterpiece receives extended notice in F. V. Krejci's "Karel Hynek Macha," and I beg leave to quote several excerpts that throw an explanatory light on much that otherwise appears obscure. Speaking of the musical structure of the poem, "May," Krejci says: