vonný vzdech. Jezero hladké v křovích stinných Zvučelo temně tajný bol, Břeh je objímal kol a kol; A slunce jasná světů jiných Bloudila blankytnými pásky, Planoucí tam co slzy lásky. Translation (artistic) Late evening, on the first of May— The twilit May—the time of love. Meltingly called the turtle-dove, Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay. Whispered of love the mosses frail, The flowering tree as sweetly lied, The rose's fragrant sigh replied To love-songs of the nightingale. In shadowy woods the burnished lake Darkly complained a secret pain, By circling shores embraced again; And heaven's clear sun leaned down to take A road astray in azure deeps, Like burning tears the lover weeps. Structure The poem consists of four cantos and two intermezzos. First canto The poem opens with a description of the lake and the night sky on the evening of 1 May; everything speaks of love—the turtle-dove, whose call ends Cantos 1, 3, and 4; the silent moss; and the nightingale. Jarmila awaits her lover anxiously under an oak tree, but instead is met by a boatman, a man she knows and presumably a member of Vilém's gang of robbers, who tells her that her lover is to be executed and curses her for having caused his death. The turtledove, closing the canto, cries "Jarmila! Jarmila!! Jarmila!!!" Second canto On the same night, the lake is described from the other side, now with images of dying stars and the pale face of the moon prevailing. Vilém, locked in a tower overlooking the lake, is chained to a stone table and bewails his fate. Remembering his youth, he quickly recalls how his father drove him from that joyful place "to grow up in the midst of thieves"; he became the leader of their band, and was called the "terrible forest lord." He falls in love with a "wilted rose" and kills her seducer, not knowing it is his father. In his complaint, he claims the guilt was not his own; his curse is his father's. The clanking chains wake the prison guards, who goes to the cell and finds Vilém motionless and senseless at the table. Vilém whispers the story in the guard's ear—the tearful guard never retells the story and "no one ever saw a smile / on his pale face again." First intermezzo Midnight, in the countryside. A chorus of ghosts awaits the coming of a new