ROMANTIC BALLAD OF THE BLACK LAKE

Water so sullen still, so deep and deathly doleful!

The forest quiet round, dark as the myrtle woeful,

around the slumbering banks only moss, umber, growing,

and any flower therein, mere waxy pallor showing.

There is no hum of bees, no songbird heard to sing,

only a falcon grey somewhere high up caw-screeching,

from cliffs around like grief of mourning, echoing,

as from afar a sob of stifled cries, beseeching.

My sight, dream tangle-snared, into black water drilling –

of that unfathomed tarn, something deep down concealing!

Perhaps Czech lore is here, a tale from green shires banished.

Or moot of ancient gods, hid by the cliff-face, vanished.

Perhaps the resting place of our Czech heroes, famed –

You god-like heroes, you, of bravery legendary,

quite overlooked by now in the lands Czechs have claimed

and remembered by all your new descendants? Nary!

For if those were to cry out for this troubled nation,

then that black lake would rise up to be a black ocean,

if from still living breast they were to whimper, sighing,

that sigh would lift that lake from its banks, send it flying!

Oh restless surely is that underwater sleep

torn with the sighs of those who lie down there assembled,

but they are dead men now, and their sighs feebly creep

up to the surface; stirred as with a breeze, soft trembled.

Perhaps our underworld is down there, inundated.

Once, looking at the peaks, as summer light abated

I saw, down wooded slopes, out of the cave there gaping,

some figures strange in droves descending like a draping,

not of a human shape, just strands of mist and those

between the tree-trunks squeezed and branch to branch down-weighed,

before the eye could aim they came approaching close,

till, like a mist-cloud, grey, on the lake surface splayed.

Oh, death sends such a throng from living feasts, such slaughter,

that the whole night’s too short, to cross that final water,

and with the morning hours, bright white light weave a skimming,

those spectral shadows flee into the forests, brimming.

Aye whenever I’ve stepped into those forests dark,

I’ve always heard strange whispers with my own footfall walking

and in my uneasy veins I suddenly felt it, stark,

those spectral stares, myself from sombre thickets stalking.

Just lean and look beneath, see the brown growing stranding,

under the water spun, for diverse nets outstanding –

there must be something there, in water so impassive,

something therein concealed in depths unfathomed, massive!

How easy it would be to dive, descending deep,

one could get closer, find the magic lore there reckoned –

I know, for certain know: there’s something there, asleep,

something is surely there – and I’m toward it beckoned.