POEMS BY ALEXANDR PUSHKIN
1829
When roaming noisy avenues,
When entering a crowded shrine,
When sitting with hot-headed youths,
I lapse into old dreams of mine.
I muse: the years will hurtle by,
And all of us seen walking here
Will go to the eternal sky,
And someone's hour is drawing near.
When looking at a lone oak-tree,
I think: this elder woodland sage
Will long survive forgotten me,
As he survived my fathers' age.
When stroking a sweet infant's face,
Farewell, my dear! I want to say,
To you I'm giving up this place:
Your time to bloom, mine to decay.
I see each year, each day and night
With the habitual reverie,
Divining in their rapid flight
My own death's anniversary.
And where will Fortune have me die?
In battle, on the road, at sea?
Or will perhaps a vale nearby
Accept the cooled remains of me?
Though where in earth it matters not
Insensate ashes decompose --
Still, closer to a cherished spot
I want my body to repose.
And by the resting-place's gate
May youthful life forever play,
Indifferent nature radiate
Eternal beauty night and day.
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1825
Should this life sometime deceive you,
Don't be sad or mad at it!
On a gloomy day, submit:
Trust -- fair day will come, why grieve you?
Heart lives in the future, so
What if gloom pervade the present?
All is fleeting, all will go;
What is gone will then be pleasant.
1830
My rubicund critic, my full-bellied
mocker,
Ever ready to rail at my desolate
muse,
Come here, and sit beside me for a
while,
Let's see if we can find a bit of
pleasure. . .
Look before you: a few squalid
hovels,
Beyond, the black earth, a sloping
plain,
And over all a thick line of grey
clouds.
Where are the bright cornfields,
forests, brooks?
Near the low fence in our yard
Two puny saplings stand to charm
the gaze.
Only two. And one of them was
stripped bare
By the autumn rain, and the other's
leaves, sodden
And yellow, will pile up in a puddle
with the first gust.
That's all. Not even a dog prowls in
the road.
Oh, here comes a peasant, with two
women behind him:
Bareheaded, a child's coffin under
his arm;
From afar he shouts out to the
priest's lazy son
To call his father and open up the
church.
"Hurry up! We haven't got all day!"
1832
In a Beauty's Album
All harmony, all wondrous fairness,
Aloof from passions and the world,
She rests, with tranquil unawareness
In her triumphant beauty furled.
When, all about her, eyes hold
muster,
Nor friends, nor rivals can be found,
Our other beauties' pallid round
Extinguished wholly by her luster.
And were you bound I know not
where,
Be it to love's embraces bidden,
Or what choice vision you may bear
In heart's most private chamber
hidden,--
Yet, meeting her, you will delay,
Struck by bemusement in
mid-motion,
And pause in worshipful devotion
At beauty's sacred shrine to pray.
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1835
I thought you had forgotten, heart,
Your ability to suffer pain.
That easy gift would come, I thought,
No more again! No more again!
Gone were the raptures and the griefs
And the dreams you half-believed. . .
But now I know, while beauty lives
so long will live my power to grieve.
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1836
Exegi Monumentum
I have erected a monument to myself
Not built by hands; the track of it,though
trodden
By the people, shall not become overgrown,
And it stands higher than Alexander's
column.
I shall not wholly die. In my sacred lyre
My soul shall outlive my dust and escape
corruption--
And I shall be famed so long as underneath
The moon a single poet remains alive.
I shall be noised abroad through all great
Russia,
Her innumerable tongues shall speak my
name:
The tongue of the Slavs' proud grandson,
the Finn, and now
The wild Tungus and Kalmyk, the steppes'
friend.
In centuries to come I shall be loved
by the people
For having awakened noble thoughts with
my lyre,
For having glorified freedom in my harsh
age
And called for mercy towards the fallen.
Be attentive, Muse, to the commandments of
God;
Fearing no insult, asking for no crown,
Receive with indifference both flattery
and anger,
And do not argue with a fool.
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1822
I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleanings of an empty heart.
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb-
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.
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... 1823
A Little Bird
In alien lands devoutly clinging
To age-old rites of Russian earth,
I let a captive bird go winging
To greet the radiant spring's rebirth.
My heart grew lighter then: why mutter
Against God's providence, and rage,
When I was free to set aflutter
But one poor captive from his cage!
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"Forth went the sower to sow his seeds..."
As freedom's sower in the wasteland
Before the morning star I went;
From hand immaculate and chastened
Into the grooves of prisonment
Flinging the vital seed I wandered--
But it was time and toiling squandered,
Benevolent designs misspent...
Graze on, graze on, submissive nation!
You will not wake to honor's call.
Why offer herds their liberation?
For them are shears or slaughter-stall,
Their heritage each generation
The yoke with jingles, and the gall.
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To The Sea
Farewell to you, unharnessed Ocean!
No longer will you roll at me
Your azure swells in endless motion
Or gleam in tranquil majesty.
A comrade's broken words on leaving,
His hail of parting at the door:
Your chant of luring, chant of grieving
Will murmur in my ears no more.
Oh, homeland of my spirit's choosing!
How often on your banks at large
I wandered mute and dimly musing,
Fraught with a sacred, troubling charge!
How I would love your deep resounding,
The primal chasm's muffled voice,
How in your vesper calm rejoice,
And in your sudden, reckless bounding!
The fisher's lowly canvas slips,
By your capricious favor sheltered,
Undaunted down your breakers' lips:
Yet by your titan romps have weltered
And foundered droves of masted ships.
Alas, Fate thwarted me from weighing
My anchor off the cloddish shore,
Exultantly your realm surveying,
And by your drifting ridges laying
My poet's course forevermore.
You waited, called... I was in irons,
And vainly did my soul rebel,
Becalmed in those uncouth environs
By passion's overpowering spell.
Yet why this sorrow? Toward what
fastness
Would now my carefree sails be spread?
To one lone goal in all your vastness
My spirit might have gladly sped.
One lonely cliff, the tomb of glory...
There chilling slumber fell upon
The ghost of mankind's proudest story:
There breathed his last Napoleon.
There rest for suffering he bartered;
And, gale-borne in his wake, there streams
Another* kingly spirit martyred,
Another regent of our dreams.
He passed, and left to Freedom mourning,
His laurels to Eternity.
Arise, roar out in stormy warning:
He was your own true bard, oh Sea!
His soul was by your spirit haunted,
In your own image was he framed:
Like you immense, profound, undaunted,
Like you nocturnal untamed.
Bereft the world... where by your power,
Oh Sea would you now carry me?
Life offers everywhere one dower:
On any glint of bliss there glower
Enlightenment or tyranny.
Farewell then, Sea! Henceforth in wonder
Your regal grace will I rever;
Long will your muffled twilit thunder
Reverberate within my ear.
To woods and silent wildernesses
Will I translate your potent spells,
Your cliffs, your coves, your shining
tresses,
Your shadows and your murmurous swells.
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The End