town-founding Pallas, praying to the town-destroyer, to the ominous strength of Poseidon who engirdles the world, and to you, aegis-bearer, Zeus, who darkens the ether! õToppled, annihilated is the great city of Ilion! The long, long quarrel has been resolved. The judgement of the gods is immutableæ. .......... Leader of dreadful hordes, the king of kings, the son of Atreus, cast his eye around the crowds of people, having kept intact the order of his ranks. With sudden anguish the royal gaze darkened: many of them had come to Troy, few had returned. õSo rise louder, voices of praise! Sing and be joyful a hundredfold. He who knows the golden return has not been carried off by hostile fate!æ .......... But not all are judged by God to have a peaceful, joyful return: on the threshold of many homes does Murder stand guard. óAlive and well, returned from the battle, in his own temple he perished!ô Inspired by all-bountiful Athena, thus spoke inspired Odysseus. õOnly that home is steady and durable where the law of the family is sacred: the gullible way of women is disloyal and shamefulæ. .......... With his wife, snatched in battle, happy one more, Atreus puts his arm around her splendid waist, and his passionate looks are glad. A wicked end awaits that which is wicked Punishment follows dishonesty. In heaven, the godsô court does not slumber! Zeusôs law rules. A wicked end to a wicked beginning! Zeus, governing by his rule of law, visits fearsome vengeance on the law-breaker, on him and his family. .......... õItôs good for fortuneôs favouritesæ, said Ajaxôs younger brother, õto honour with praise the despotism of the Olympians. Unsubservient to a higher power is fortune in her whims: Friend Patroclus is long in his grave and Thersites still lives! Destiny throws the dice with her capricious hand. Be happy and sing songs if the luminary warms you! .......... Be consoled, my dear brother! Your memory is eternal! You are the indestructible bulwark of the Achaean children in their struggle! On that fearsome day, that bloody day, you alone stand for all of them! But it was not the powerful one, it was the cunning one who won the great revenge. Not by the victorious hand of the foe, but by your own did you fall. Ah, but itôs often the best of people who are destroyed by pernicious anger!æ .......... And now to your masterly shade, valiant Pelides, your son, Pyrrhus, glorious warrior, prepares a libation. õMy parentæ, he pronounced, õno-one but you has Zeus, the great designer, raised to such earthly stature.æ On earth, where nothing is constant, there is no good higher than glory. The earth will take our mortal dust. The famous name is imperishable. .......... õAlthough about the fallen, the vanquished, the victorious cries say nothing, but among your far-off family, Hector, you will be great! Worthy of eternal memory, saving his country, honourable, brave warrior.æ Thus the son of Tidaeus foretold. Honour to him who unquailing has lain down his life for his brothers! The conqueror may have conquered, but the fame of the fallen is more sacred! .......... Now old Nestor, venerable reveller, taking his cup, stands, and the vessel, wreathed in ivy, he gives to Hecuba: õMother, drink, this healing stream and forget your loss! The magic juice of Bacchus is powerful, it heals us miraculously! Mother, taste the healing stream and forget destinyôs law. It heals miraculously, this magic gift of Bacchus.æ .......... And the power of ancient Niobe is oppressed by evil grief, but she drank the wondrous juice and was consoled. Just let the goblet at the table sparkle with paradisal wine and into the Lethe our grief will fall falling like a key to its bed. Yes, while in the cup there plays the all-powerful wine, grief is carried away to Lethe, our grief drowns in the Lethe! .......... And there rose at the farewell the soothsayer-wife, and she fulfilled a prophecy, an inspired one, taking one last time the burned out ruins of her home: óSmoke and steam is all our life is, immortality, oh gods, is for you alone!ô As the plumes of smoke waft away, so our days go by! Gods, only you are eternal, everything earthly goes by!ô 182. Across the riverôs broad expanse you see, as the waters come back to life, floe following floe into the all-embracing sea. .......... Rainbow-glistening during the day, or sailing through the murk of night, ineluctably they thaw, in the same direction they float away, .......... all of them merging, large and small, shadows of their former selves, like the element uncaring, as into the fateful pit they fall! .......... Ah, human ego, you seduce the mind of man! Is this your only fate? Is this your only use? 183. How we murder while we love! How, filled with passionôs blind fury, we are so consummately skilled at destroying what is closest to our hearts! .......... Was it long ago, proud of your gains, that you told herself, õSheôs mine!æ? Not a year has passed. Now ask yourself, õWhatôs left of her?æ .......... Where have the roses gone from your cheeks, the smile from your lips, the sparkle from your eyes? Tears have scorched every part of you, burning ruts with their fiery streams. .......... You remember the first day you met, that first, that fateful time, her magical gaze, the way she talked, her childlike, vivacious laugh? .......... Whatôs left? Where has it gone? And was the dream long-lived? Alas like summer up in the north, it was just a fleeting guest. .......... She served her time in Fateôs dread gaol - your love did that for her - lying across her life like a shame she had never deserved. .......... A life of denial, a suffering life! In the depths of her soul she clung to those memories she could, though even they let her down! ......... And she was shunned on earth. All charm has passed her by. Flooding in, the crowd trampled hard into the mud whatever had bloomed in her soul. .......... From this long calvary what, like ash, has she managed to save? Pain, evil, bitter pain, pain without joy, without tears! .......... How we murder while we love! How, filled with passionôs blind fury, we are so consummately skilled at destroying what is closest to our hearts! 184. How I love to find again the source of your lifeôs early years, listening, my heart entranced, to its unchanging narrative. What freshness! What mystery! Walking these happy banks once more, what a soft and tender light bathes this misty sky! What blossoms coloured the banks of this stream which flowed so purely! What beautiful reveries were reflected in its blueness! When you have spoken of your childhood, which I have incompletely understood, I have felt my body lifted in a breeze and floating like veiled spring. 185. I donôt know whether grace will touch my sickly-sinful soul. Will it rise from the dead? Will this spiritual torpor pass? .......... If only my soul could find peace here, on this earth, that state of grace would be you, you, my earthly providence! 186. THE FIRST LEAF Young leaves are turning green. See the youthful foliage where birches standed wafted, airily, hazily green, part-translucent, like mist. .......... Theyôve been dreaming of spring a long time, spring and golden summer, but now these living dreams, beneath the first blue sky, have burst upon the day. .......... What beauty in these new-born leaves washed in sunshine, casting their first shadows! And from their stirring we can hear that in these thousands, through these shadowy masses, you will not find a single leaf thatôs dead! 187. Youôve often heard the admission: óI am not worthy of your loveô. She may be my creation, yet how poor I am before her! .......... Faced by your love, it hurts to think back about myself. I stand there, silently revering, and I bow my head to you. .......... When at times, so meekly, with such faith, with such prayer, involuntarily you kneel before that dear cradle, .......... where she sleeps, your creation, your unnamed cherub, remember my humility before your loving heart. 188. Today itôs not the flesh - the spirit is laid bare. Man longs in desperation. He strives to leave the darkness for the light, protesting and rebelling once heôs there. .......... Through non-belief heôs dry and burned, he tolerates what man should never bear, aware at every step that he is ruined, not trying to attain that faith for which heôs always yearned. .......... The door stays closed though he may grieve. Heôll never offer prayers nor tears. Heôll never call, õMy God, admit me, for I do have faith! Come to my aid, for I cannot believe!æ 189. THE WAVE AND THE THOUGHT Thoughts and the smooth ebb and flow of the tides are simply one element having two sides. In the cramped heart, in the breadth of the ocean, in here they are captives, out there in free motion... Always the same flow and ebb of the seas, always that spectre of empty unease... 190. Heat has not congealed this glittering night in July and above the dulling earth the storm-pregnant sky shimmers in summer lightning. .......... Like heavy eyelids lifting over earth, through scampering lightning threatening pupils flashing now and then... 191. Separation has this lofty meaning: if love lasts years, if but a day it takes, loveôs just a dream and weôre a moment dreaming, and whether early, whether late the waking, the time must finally arrive when we awake. 192. (GOETHE) Do you know the land where the myrtle and laurel bloom, where deep and pure is the azure vault of the sky, where the lemon flowers, and the golden orange burns like a fire beneath its dense foliage? Have you been there? There, there would I like to hide away with you, my love. .......... Do you know that summit with a path along its steep sides? The nag wanders across the misty snows. In mountain crevices there lives a family of snakes, the avalanche thunders and the waterfall roars. Have you been there? There, there with you lies our path. Letôs go away, my sovereign. .......... Do you know the house of marble columns? The hall shines and the cupola is radiant. Idols look out, sad and silent. õWhat is it with you, poor child?æ Have you been there? There, there with you, letôs go away quickly; letôs go, my parent. 193. Day turns to evening. Night approaches. Shadows lie longer down slopes. Clouds fade away as it becomes late and evening encroaches. .......... I do not fear the murk of night! Nor do I regret the fading day as long as you, my magic spectre, as long as you donôt leave my sight! .......... Let your wings capture me, soothe the agitation in my heart, and the shade will be bliss indeed for a soul in rapture. .......... Who are you? Where are you from? How can I decide if youôre of heaven or of earth? Perhaps you live in heaven, but thereôs a passionate, female soul inside! 194. Summer thunderôs a happy ogre eddying flying dust when a storm, welling darkly huge, troubles the blue of the sky, and when a sudden dart of madness pounces on a grove, making trees shudder wide-leaved and noisily. As if beneath some unseen foot, the woody giants bend their tops in anxious grumbles of a secret conference. Through the quick alarm not a single bird stops whistling, and somewhere in the middle of it all the first yellow leaf, tumbling along a road, announces fall. 195. FROM WILHELM TELL (SCHILLER) Coolness and comfort waft up from the lake. The youth has dozed off, lulled on the shore. Blissful sounds he hears in his sleep; the faces of angels singing on high. .......... And now heôs come out of his heavenly slumber, embraced and caressed by the swell, and he hears a voice, like the thrumming of strings; õCome, handsome boy, into my embrace!æ 196. Not in vain has the gracious god made the little bird easily scared. To ensure it survives this life, itôs been created well and truly timid. .......... No good will come of it. The poor bird has to live with people, as part of the family of man, and the nearer to them, the nearer to Fate. Itôll come to no good in their hands. .......... Now hereôs a little bird which a girl, from its fledgling feathers, from the very nest, has nurtured, helped to grow neither regretting nor sparing caresses nor effort. .......... But despite all the love and concern you spend on it, love, the day will come, my girl, youôll not avoid it, when your careless ward will perish at your hands. 197. PREDESTINATION Love, tradition states, is a union of kindred souls. They join together, they combine, fatefully they mingle and itôs a duel ordained by fate. .......... Whichever is the tenderer in this one-sided war of two hearts, more surely, ineluctably will find love and sad, numb delight ... and pain as its exhausted, languid gain. 198. Donôt tell me that he loves me as he used to, that, just as he used to, he places value on my life. Donôt! Heôs inhuman and heôs driving me to ruin, although his hand is shaking with the knife. .......... Indignant then in tears, depressed then angry, mad about him, stung to my very soul, I ache, I suffer, cannot live ... Him, him alone I live by, but what a life! My heart just wants to break! .......... He measures out my air. He is so careful, meagre. Why, his worst enemy would get a bigger share. How painful now, how difficult my breathing, although I do still breathe - Itôs life I cannot bear! 103 53 199. Don't trouble me with your complaints, although you're fully justified. Much more than me they'll envy you, your love and passion side by side. I gaze in envy, angrily, 200. What you guarded in your heart like a tiny, frightened beast, praying, protecting, fate has grabbed by the scruff and thrown into a lions' feast. .......... The animals stormed the inner sanctum of your heart, and you were ashamed, you could not help yourself, at the secrets their claws ripped apart. .......... God, if your soul had wings to leave your body, to lift you by the nape from the crudeness of the crowd, to keep you safe from man's eternal rape! 201. I knew a pair of eyes. Oh, what a sight! God knows I loved them dearly! My soul could not be torn from their magic, passionate night! .......... Inscrutable was that gaze, where life was bared to its depths, such suffering I sensed there, and such a depth of passion! .......... Melancholy was their breathing, deep in their dense lashes' shade, languid as pleasure, fateful as suffering. .......... And on such marvellous days, it never happened once that I would meet them unperturbed, without a tear springing to my eyes. 202. TWINS There are twins. For the earthborn they are gods, Death and Sleep, like brother and sister wondrously akin, Death's the gloomier, Sleep is gentler. .......... But there are two more twins: there are no finer twins in the world, and there's no fascination more fearsome than he who's surrendered his heart to them. .......... They're no in-laws. Their union is one of blood, and only on days ordained by fate, with their unsolvable mystery do they charm us, enchant, fascinate, .......... and who, in an excess of sensation, when blood boils and freezes in his veins, can claim he's never tasted your temptations, Suicide and Love? 203. Mobile comme l'onde Ocean-waves, self-willed waves, whether at rest or play, how full you are of wondrous life! .......... Laughing in the sun, tossing back the sky's reflection, heaving, throwing breakers at the world in your watery, wild wilderness. .......... I find your quiet whisper sweet, caressing, love-filled; your restless murmuring I hear, your prescient moans. .......... In the wild element, gloomy or glad, in your quiet, blue night guard the secret you have taken. .......... Not a treasured ring-gift did I drop into your swell. Not a precious stone did I bury in your deeps. ......... No, at a fateful moment, lured by mysterious delight, all my soul, my living soul, I buried on your bed. 204. TO THE MEMORY OF V.A. ZHUKOVSKY I saw your evening. It was fair! Making my final farewell, admiring its clear serenity, utterly warmth-imbued ... Oh, they burned and shone, your rays, poet, your farewell rays. Meanwhile, slowly we discerned his night's first stars. .......... He knew no falsehood. His was a wholeness of spirit. In him, everything was in close harmony. With such benevolent cordiality, he read me those tales from Homer, blossoming, radiant tales from childhood's early years. Meanwhile, the dusky, mysterious light of the stars crept over them. .......... In truth, he was whole and pure in spirit, dove-like, though not despising the serpent's wisdom; he understood it. A pure dove's spirit wafted through him and by this spiritual purity he was a man, strong, shining from within. His soul was elevated to a harmony. Harmoniously he lived, harmoniously he sang! .......... This lofty structure of his soul which gave him life, nourished his muse like the best fruit, like his greatest exploit, he bequeathed to an agitated world. Will the world realise it, evaluate the gift? Are we worthy of this token? Perhaps it was not about us that the divinity said, "Only those of pure heart see God"! 205. The sun is shining, waters glisten. Everything smiles, everything lives. Forests rustle joyously, bathing in the blueness of the sky. .......... Trees are singing, waters glisten. Love has dissolved in the air and the blossoming world of nature is ecstatic in life's abundance. .......... But in all this surplus of sensation no joy is more acute than a single smile of emotion from your tormented soul. 206. The forest is entranced by Winter the Magician. Under velvet snow it's mute, immobile, glistening wondrously with life, standing enchanted, neither dead nor alive, entranced by a magic dream, entirely covered, fettered by light links of snow. Should winter's sun cast a sudden flare glancing across its summits, not a thing will shiver in it. It will sparkle and flame and be blindingly fair! 207. LAST LOVE On the final slope of years our love's more tender, more superstitious. Shine on, shine on, parting light! Shine on, last twilit love! .......... Half the sky is dark. Only in the west a glimmer prowls. Slow down, slow down, departing day, stay longer, longer, charm. .......... Should blood run thinner, tenderness is just as full. Ah, last love, bliss you are, and hopelessness! 208. THE NEMAN Neman, majestic Neman, is it you, you flowing before me? You, so long, so gloriously guarding Russia faithfully? Once, only once, by the will of God, you let the Antichrist affront the sacred integrity of our Russian land and doing that, you made it firm forever! .......... Neman, do you remember the past, the day of that fateful year when he stood above you, he, that mighty southern demon, when you, as now, flowed on, surging under the bridges of the foe, when he caressed you with his eyes, with his wondrous eyes? .......... His companies knew victories, their banners gaily flapping, the sun picked out their bayonets, beneath the cannon bridges groaning, and from on high, just like a god, he seemed to soar above them, moving, watching over every item with his wondrous eyes. ........... Just one thing he did not see, this wondrous warrior, did not see that there, upon the other bank, there stood Another. Stood. Waited. The companies went by with awesome, warlike faces. The inescapable Hand of Fate put its stamp on every one. .......... So, the companies had victories, their banners blowing in the wind. Their bayonets were like lightning, sparkling as their drums resounded ... Oh, they were countless! Of this innumerable host marching by, not a tenth, not a tenth, escaped that fateful stamp! 209. A SPIRITUALISTIC PREDICTION Days of battle and solemnity will come. Russia will regain the frontiers bequeathed to her and old Moscow will be the newest of the three capitals. 210. TO A. S. DOLGORUKAYA In her there lives charm, a marvel of pure delicacy, a charm of mystery and melancholy, and her soft presence is like an obscure dream with which, without knowing how, the soul is filled. 211. SUMMER, 1854 What a summer! Such a season! It's got to be pure magic. How, I wonder, have we earned this for no apparent reason? .......... In some alarm my eyes are meeting this glitter and this light. Is someone poking fun at us? Where is the source of such a greeting? .......... Ah, it's like a youthful smile on a woman's lips and in her eyes, not ravishing, not tempting us, disturbing our old age a while. 212. What is more impotent and sad than not knowing? Who has the courage to say, "See you soon!" across an abyss of two or three days? 213. You're not in the mood for verses, our kindred, Russian tongue! The harvest is ripe, the reaper is ready, an unearthly time has come to pass. .......... Lies have become steel incarnate. God has somehow allowed not a whole world to threaten you with calamity, but an entire hell to threaten your downfall! .......... Every blasphemous mind and every-God-reviling race has dredged up monarchies of murk in the name of light and freedom! .......... Preparing a cell for you, they foretell your ignominy, yours, the Word, life, enlightenment of better days to come! .......... Oh, in this stern trial, in this final, fateful struggle, be faithful to yourself, justify your deeds to God. 214. To merit one word, one comma, one full stop of his inimitable pencil, a devil would be converted, an angle would offer itself to the devil. 215. ON THE OCCASION OF THE ARRIVAL OF THE AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE AT THE FUNERAL OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS No, there's a limit to one's patience, there's also a limit to shamelessness! I swear by his imperial shade, not everything can be endured! ......... No matter how loudly all around people send up wails of anguish, get this Austrian Judas away, away from his royal tomb! ......... Away with their traitor's kiss, and let all their breed of apostles be branded by one name: Iscariot, Iscariot! 216. Redness. Flaring. Sparks spurt and fly. Over the water there's a dark orchard. From its copses coolness sighs. Dusk. Heat. Shouting. There's a dream I'm wandering through. There's one thing I keenly sense: you're in me while I'm with you. .......... Crackle after crackle. Endless smoke. A naked, protruding pall. In inviolable peace, leaves waft and rustle. I'm fanned by their breath. I catch your passionate words. Thank God that I'm with you. Being with you is paradise to me. 217. In life there are moments you cannot convey, the earthly paradise of selflessness. Tree-tops rustle high above me and only heavenly birds talk to me. All that is vile and false becomes so distant. All that is so touchingly-impossible so near and so light. Then I feel good and things are sweet. There's peace within my soul. Fanned by drowsiness, I say, 'Time, please wait!' 218. These poor villages, this sorry nature! Long suffering is native to you, land of our Russian people! The proud foreign glance cannot comprehend - would not even notice! - what shines secretly through your humble nakedness. Burdened by his cross, throughout your length and breadth, in the rags of a slave, the Heavenly King has walked, blessing you, my native land! 219. From sea to sea the wire goes, a slippery thread of iron. Fame and grief are in abundance at times along its path. .......... Following it with his eyes, the traveller will note at times prescient birds which perch along the grapevine. .......... From the plain a raven rises, blackly sitting on the line, sitting, cawing, gaily flapping wings. .......... And it shouts and it exults and it wheels above the wire. Does the raven sense the blood of news from Sevastopol? 220. TO COUNTESS ROSTOPCHINA Oh, in these days, these fateful days, of trials and of losses, let her return be a joyful one to those places dear to her heart! ......... Let the good spirit speed her on to meet that handful of friends still living, so many dear, dear shades! 221. 1856 Blindly we face Fate. It's not our task to tear away its cover. These words are not my own, but the prophetic rambling of spirits. .......... We're a long away from our aim. A storm is howling, a storm is growing, and there you have it, in an iron cradle the New Year's born in thunder. .......... It's features are fearsomely stern and there's blood on its hands and its brow, but it's brought to man on his earth more than alarms of war. .......... It'll be more than just a warrior, for it administers the punishments of God. Like a late avenger, it will strike a blow long thought out. .......... It's sent for battles and reprisals, it bears two swords: one, the bloody sword of war, the executioner's axe is the other. .......... But for whom? For one neck along? Is our entire nation doomed? The fateful words are muffled. Sleep beyond the grave is never clear. 222. Oh, my prophetic soul! Oh heart filled with alarm! You'd think you beat upon the threshold of a twofold existence. .......... Yes, you inhabit two worlds: your day is sickly, passionate, your night prophetically unclear, like the revelations of spirits. .......... Let the suffering breast be agitated by fateful passions. The soul is ready, just like Mary, to cling eternally to the feet of Christ. 223. Be quiet, please! Don't dare wake me! Oh, in this criminal, shameful age, not to live, not to feel is a lot to be envied. It's a pleasure to sleep, more pleasurable to be a stone. 224. Yes, sleep is sweet, but it's sweeter not to have been! In these times of misfortune and supreme shame seeing nothing, feeling nothing, is indeed a high pleasure! Don't dare wake me... I beg you, speak quietly! 225. To serve God and Russia was never your intention. Your conceit alone deserved your full attention. Whether good whether bad, your every task was nothing but spectral, false invention. You had no throne - you wore an actor's mask! 226. For him who served his native land with faith and love, served with thought and blood, served with the word, served with his soul, and whom providence has placed, not without good reason, on the path of new generations, a path of many difficulties, and raised among the ranks of reliable warriors... 227. What I've managed to keep alive of hope, faith and love has merged into one prayer: survive, survive! 228. A door should be open or closed. You're starting to annoy me, dear, so why don't you go to Hell! 229. TO N. F. SHCHERBINA I fully understand the meaning of your sickly dream, your struggle, your striving, your alarmed service before the ideal of beauty. .......... Like an imprisoned Hellene sinking into sleep out in the steppes, beneath blizzard-filled Scythian skies, who hallucinates about golden freedom and the sky of his native Greece. 230. (SCHILLER) Fortune had an argument with a favourite and flew off to poor Wisdom: "Sister, give me your hand and my grief will be lightened by your friendship. .......... With my best gifts have I showered him, like his mother, and what does he do? Never satisfied, he dares to call me mean! .......... Sofia, believe me, let's be friends! Look, here are piles of silver. Throw aside your spade. You no longer need it. I'll be enough for you, dear sister." .......... "Fly off!" Wisdom answered her. "Don't you hear me? Your friend curses life - save the madman from the knife, but I've no need of Fortune." 231. His fine day has disappeared in the West, having embraced half the sky with an immortal twilight, and he, from the depths of northern skies, he himself looks down on us like a prophetic star. 232. Above this ignorant crowd of people not yet awake, will you ever rise, Freedom, will your golden rays gleam? .......... Your ray will shine and revive them, chasing sleep and mists, but old, rotten wounds, the weals of abuse and contempt, .......... the decaying of souls and the void that gnaws the mind and pains the heart, what can heal that, what can cover it up? Only you, Christ's pure image. 233. There is a fleeting, wondrous moment during autumn's early days: time stands motionless, time's a crystal, evenings bathe in brilliant rays. .......... Where sickles swung and crops were toppled, there's just an empty wasteland now. A strand of glittering web is all you notice across an idle track cut by a plough. .......... The air has emptied. Birds no longer chatter, though there's some time to wait for winter's snow and rain, and pure and warm, a gentle blue is flowing across the resting plains. 234. Look at the coppice! Foliage awash in scorching sun, wafting sweet comfort around me, from every bough and leaf it runs! .......... Let's go inside and sit above the roots of trees fed by that rill, where trees waft in their thousands the stream which whispers in the dusky still. .......... Delirium runs her fingers through the leafy summits suspended in the midday heat and every now and then an eagle screeches, from very far away. 235. When your eighteen years will be a dream for you as well, with love, with quiet tenderness, remember it, remember us. 236. TO E. N. ANNENKOVA Are you trying to borrow the features of a northern girl, a frail, languishing creature born amid the gloom of forests, you, laughing, shining songstress? I cannot help it, forgive me, but it seems to me, on seeing this picture, that an orange-blossom bathed in light is trying to mimic a birch-tree. 237. At times when there is depression in our breasts, when the heart is tormented, when ahead there is only mist, when, powerless and static, we're so crushed that even our dear friends' consolations cease to amuse us, suddenly a sun-ray greets us, stealing stealthily up, fire-colouredly splashing in a stream across the walls, and from the benevolent sky, from the blue heights, a sudden fragrance flutters into our window .......... Admonitions and advice are not what it brings and it will not save us from fate's calumny, but we sense its power, hear the bliss in it, and we feel less anguish, and it's easier to breathe. Just as wonderfully paradisal, aerial, bright - - but a hundredfold! - your love has been to me! 238. She was sitting on the floor sorting letters which were old, holding them before she threw them out like ash gone cold. .......... Her look was strange while she held those pages she knew so well, as if she were a soul which peered down at its abandoned shell. .......... So many irreversible events, such life fulfilled and filled with minutes of love and joy across the years! How many grief-packed minutes killed! .......... Silent, I stood to one side and my knees were ready to bend as a fearful sadness crept into my heart, as if at the ghost of a dear, old friend! 239. PEACE When what we called our own has left us forever and, as if we lay in our grave, there's a heavy weight upon us, .......... we can always cast a fleeting glance across the waters' slope where streams flow headlong, wherever the current leads. .......... Jostling each other, the currents run, hurry to some fateful summons they've heard in the distance. .......... Vainly we observe them. They'll never return, but the longer we watch, the easier we breathe. .......... Tears spring to our eyes and through them we see, excitedly bubbling, everything more swiftly born away. .......... The soul becomes oblivious and feels right then that it too is borne away by omnipotent waters. 240. Late in autumn I love the park of Tsarskoe Selo, when a still half-dusk seems to drown it in slumber and winged visions of white in the lake's dull glass, voluptuously mute, hang limply in the dusk. ......... On the royal steps of Catherine's halls lie twilight shadows of early October evenings. Like thickets of oaks, the gardens darken. Like a reflection of a glorious past, out of the murk with the stars a golden cupola emerges. 241. ON THE JOURNEY HOME 1. Dismal hour, dismal sight ... Speeding onwards through the night ... Look, a phantom rising from the dead, the moon has risen in the misty air, lighting up the wastes ahead ... There's far to go - do not despair! .......... As we ride, into my mind steals the place I've left behind ... Its moon's alive and it delights in breathing Lake Leman's cool air. Wondrous country, wondrous sights! There's far to go - on through the night! 2. I was born here, where giant snow-clouds list and let faint hints of blue filter down to touch dark woods muffled in late autumn mist. .......... No life at all here ... Boundless silence, dull and bare ... The scene's drab greyness broken only where stagnant pools, touched by first ice, are glinting here and there. .......... Not a sound here, nor colour, movement - life's a drying stream. Submissive to his fate, in an oblivion of exhaustion man exists but in a dream. His eyes are dulled like fading day. Although he's only just been there, he can't believe in lands where lakes reflect blue mountains caught in golden rays. 242. There are many tiny, unnamed constellations in the lofty sky, indistinguishable one from the other to our weak, hazy eyes. .......... No matter how they shine, it's not for us to judge their glitter. Only the telescope's wondrous power may be able to reach them. .......... But there are different constellations, sending different rays: like fiery-living suns they shine to us at night. .......... Their bracing, joy-bearing beacon is a boon to our souls everywhere, on land and sea. We see it everywhere before us. .......... Delight of this earthly world, they are the beauty of the kindred heavens, and for these stars you don't need glasses. You can see them if you're myopic. 243. FOR HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY Glamour, illusion, magic and fable: all render homage and fall at your feet. One feels, wherever you appear, that Truth is the one adorable feat. 244. FOR GRAND DUCHESS HELENE In this palace, whatever takes place, nothing is unlikely and everything is in its place: faery is always at home here, for that is the way things are done here. 245. A DECEMBER MORNING The moon's still out. Night has still not budged, just ruling, unaware that day is coming to, albeit lazily and timidly. Ray after ray creeps out of cloud, though night in majesty still shines across the sky. Just give it three or four more moments and night will dissipate, while in its blinding fullness day will show itself and claim the earth. 246. TO E.N. ANNENKOVA Into daily life come radiant dreams by which we're suddenly whisked off to unfamiliar lands, to magic worlds, alien, yet worlds our soul knows well, .......... and from the light-blue sky we see, in an unearthly radiance wafting down, a different nature, having neither dawn nor sunset. Another sun is shining there. .......... Everything is better, brighter, larger, so far from what is earthly, so different to everything we're used to and in the pure, flaming sky the soul is so light-heartedly at home. .......... We've woken up. The vision ends. We've no means to restrain it. Beneath a dull, still shadow, life grabs us back again, condemns us to our cell. .......... Persisting, there's a sound we barely hear, ringing out above us, before our soul, tormented, longing, that irresistible glance remains, that very smile we glimpsed in dreams. 247. FROM JAKOB BOHME Whoever has combined in himself Time and Eternity, has protected himself from every grief. 248. "Sceptical" sums up the way I feel, Holy Russia, about your worldly affairs: once you were a peasant shack. You now have a corner under the stairs! 249. Tracing its path across the sky, does the sun know that it alone pours life into nature with its golden brilliance, .......... that with its rays God draws tracery on blossoms, gives the gift of fruit to the farmer and scatters pearls around the river? .......... You, casting (your dear) glance around, do you know that all my life and strength are in your fiery gaze? 250. From these empty lands, from this wintry weather, go to that land where the sea always shines, go with a greeting, my feeble lines, go on with you, greet my daughter. 251. REMEMBER (Vevey 1859 - Geneva 1860) I recall her final glances at this land, this lake, these mountains luxuriantly glorious in the west's last beams. As if through the mist of a laboured illness, she tried at times to catch a wondrous spectre. She was so in sympathy with this entire world. .......... How in their dim outlines she loved these mountains, waves and stars, loved with her keen, loving soul. And in dissolution's approaching strife, what tender feelings lived in her before this ever-youthful life. .......... The Alps gleamed, the lake breathed. It was here, through tears, that we came to understand that whoever's soul is regally bright, whoever has kept it alive to the end, at the terrible, fateful moment, will always be as they were. 252. Though I've built my nest in valley, still there are times when I know that somewhere far above me, life-pulsing aerial currents flow. At times like that I'd leave this stifling world, towards those heights impelled, when everything which suffocates I desperately need to repel! .......... I can gaze for many hours at inaccessible massifs which pour their coolness, rain such showers noisily towards me! In sudden iridescence bursts into light the virgin snow. That's when I see the traces on the summits where unseen angels go. 253. Old Hecuba, alas, so long so sorely tried, after many reverses and disasters, finds refuge in your youthful goodness, rested and washed by your side. 254. ON THE OCCASION OF PRINCE PYOTR ANDREEVICH VYAZEMSKY'S JUBILEE. The Muse has catholic tastes, unequal in her generosity, one hundredfold more godlike than good fortune, but equally capricious. .......... Some she'll foster at daybreak, kissing their young curls' silk, but should the breeze blow warmer she will flee as they awake. .......... Others, in a hidden meadow, by a brook, she'll visit unexpectedly, delight with a chance smile, but she'll make her first tryst her last! .......... That didn't happen to you: catching you in youth with perfect timing, she loved you with passion in her soul gazing long and hard at you. .......... She didn't pass you by. With time to spare she nourished, caressed, cared tenderly for your talent. Her love became more tender year by year. .......... Just as with the years the strength and fire of the noble vine develops, so in your goblet hotter, brighter, inspiration poured. .......... Never did such wine as now crown your cup of fame. In honour of the goddess, prince, let's raise the foaming vessel! .......... In honour of the goddess who nobly preserved the sacred legacy of the soul, our native tongue. Let her grow freely and fulfil her great task! .......... Then, reverently silent, we'll hold a sacred repast for the dead, a triple libation to three unforgettably