dead soul, and especially the "guardian" of the burial site: as the author explains in a note, the last one buried stands guard over the graves at night until a newly buried person can take their place. Personified elements of the poem, such as the gale over the lake, the pillar with wheel, night, and the moon speak out on what they will contribute to the funeral. The mole under the earth, for instance, will dig his grave. This continues until the break of day. Third canto On the morning of 2 May, Vilém is led from his prison to the place of execution. The setting is as beautiful as the spring—there is a sweet morning wind, and "every living creature celebrates young May." A crowd accompanies Vilém to the hillock where the stake and wheel stand; many pray for him. The convict, overlooking the beauty of the landscape, bewails how he will never see Nature's bounty again and apostrophizes the clouds, and calls out to earth, whom he calls "my cradle and my grave, my mother / my only homeland." In short order the executioner's sword flashes, the dead man's head "drops--bounces--bounces again," and his head and limbs are displayed on the pillar and the wheel. The canto ends with the turtledove crying "Vilém! Vilém!! Vilém!!!" Second intermezzo In the forest, under oak trees, Vilém's gang silently sits in a circle, in the middle of the night. All of nature whispers "Our leader's dead," the forests in the distance quake and echo the complaint, "Our lord is dead!" Fourth canto On the last day of the year, a traveler, seven years after these events, comes across the knoll where the stake and wheel still display Vilém's bones and skull. Fleeing to the town, he asks, the next morning, about the skeleton, and his innkeeper tells him the story. Returning many years later, on 1 May, he sits on the hill; nature has awoken again and again the nightingale sings while the wind plays through the hollow skull. He sits until nightfall, meditating on Vilém's life as well as his own, decrying "humanity's lost paradise, ... my lovely childhood." The poem ends with the turtledove, who "invites to love: / 'Hynek'!--Vilém!!--Jarmila!!!'" Rhyme and meter The basic metrical unit is the iamb, unusual for the Czech poetry at that time, and probably inspired by English romanticism, particularly by George Gordon Byron.