When you were reading those tormented lines
In which the heart's resonant flame sends out glowing streams
And passion's fatal torrents rear up, —
Didn't you recall a single thing?
I can't believe it! That night on the steppe
When, in the midnight mist a premature dawn,
Transparent, lovely as a miracle,
Broke in the distance before you
And your unwilling eye was to this beauty drawn
To that majestic glow beyond the realm of darkness, —
How could it be that nothing whispered to you then:
A man has perished in that fire!
Когда читала ты мучительные строки,
Где сердца звучный пыл сиянье льёт кругом
И страсти роковой вздымаются потоки, —
Не вспомнила ль о чём?
Я верить не хочу! Когда в степи, как диво,
В полночной темноте безвременно горя,
Вдали перед тобой прозрачно и красиво
Вставала вдруг заря.
И в эту красоту невольно взор тянуло,
В тот величавый блеск за тёмный весь предел, —
Ужель ничто тебе в то время не шепнуло:
«Там человек сгорел!»
«By gates of an abode, blessed, / A man stood, asking for donation, / A beggar, cruelly oppressed / By hunger, thirst and deprivation. He asked just for a peace of bread, / And all his looks were full of anguish, / And was a cold stone laid / Into his stretched arm, thin and languished. ...»
«My lonely heart athirst, I trod / A barren waste when, so 'twas fated, / A winged seraph 'fore me stood: / Where crossed the desert roads he waited. / Upon my orbs of sightless clay / His fingers lightly he did lay. / And like a startled eagle round me / I gazed and saw the earth surro...»
«I’ve ceased to smile long ago, / The bitter winds now chill my lips, / Another hope was just let go, / Another song was added since. / Against my will, I’ll cede this song / To people’s laughter and offense, / Because love’s silence for the soul / Is too unbearably immense.»
«And the stone word has fallen down / On my breast, being alive, awhile... / No matter, I was ready, almost... / I'll cope, overcome this time. I'm today completly borrowed, rather, / It is need to kill the memory to end. / It is need for my soul — to harden, / It is need — again to...»