"I wished to sing of the golden Carpathians, the wines of Tokay, the splendour of the moon; but when I touched the strings of my lyre, 'Mina,' and again 'Mina,' alone resounded in my ears.
"In simple style I wished to write of fables, flowers, kingdoms, but my pen, self-willed, traces other characters than those that I intended.
"My speech also does not obey my will, and what when in company my heart carefully conceals my rash tongue reveals."
The singular mixture of love and national enthusiasm already noted appears quaintly—it would be severe to say grotesquely—in another sonnet of the first book. Kollar writes:—
"Once when a heavy sleep closed her weary little eyelids, I for half an hour practised kissing her as a true Slav should.
"My kisses were not such as Roman, Greek, or German describes—sensual buffooneries. They were pure, proper kisses, such as the customs of our Russian brothers allow.
"Thus then did I kiss my love: from the forehead downward to the chin, then in the shape of a cross from one little ear to the other.
"On this voyage twice I reached the little rose-garden of her lips, through which my soul enters into hers."
Of the sonnets of the second canto I shall quote one in which Kollar's enthusiasm for "Slavia," the Slav world, which he distinguishes from the goddess "Sláva," appears most clearly. He writes:—
"Slavia, Slavia! Thou name of sweet sound but of bitter memory; hundred times divided and destroyed, but yet more honoured than ever.