Page:Songs of the Slav.pdf/53

 Sound from a hundred throats, And strained nerves Tremble with bliss. Wretched mankind! Some sort of phantom, Fara morgana, Glittered somewhere for thee In the boundless desert!

Wretched mankind! The following hour Again art thou further on, Ahasuerus of thy fable, In thy flight! And the deceitful phantom Will find itself in the jaws Of the bluish past, As all things else!

And the spiral spreads and spreads. The nineteenth circle, Which we call enlightened, Runs into the twentieth. 'Tis an age of steam, Chemistry and physics, And a god grown old, And several kings, And rows of fine battles, And full of knowledge, And nerves unstrung, And of vain hopes,