You say that I’m asleep, and you
Laugh over me, humiliating
And you would force me to repeating
A hundred times “My love is true”.
Your southern voice is soft, your grace
The grace of a gazelle recalling
But I come to you from a place
Of storm where endless snows are falling.
Strange the light valse’s echoes seem
A stifling cloud above you lowers.
For me you are a lovely dream
That glitters through the snowy showers.
I am afraid to call you by
Your name. A name — what need for saying?
But let me feast my greedy eye
Upon your southern beauty straying,
Upon your face forgotten quite.
That calls to memory unavailing
Days fleeting, days of joy unfailing
Slain by a snowstorm in the night.
Ты говоришь, что я дремлю,
Ты унизительно хохочешь.
И ты меня заставить хочешь
Сто раз произнести: люблю.
Твой южный голос томен. Стан
Напоминает стан газели,
А я пришел к тебе из стран,
Где вечный снег и вой метели.
Мне странен вальса легкий звон
И душный облак над тобою.
Ты для меня — прекрасный сон,
Сквозящий пылью снеговою…
И я боюсь тебя назвать
По имени. Зачем мне имя?
Дай мне тревожно созерцать
Очами жадными моими
Твой южный блеск, забытый мной,
Напоминающий напрасно
День улетевший, день прекрасный,
Убитый ночью снеговой.
«I had a dream: I slept, and I imagined / That I was dead and lost in reverie at that; / And lovingly, that reverie by kind of magic / Had given rise to hope in my depressing heart. / / What kind of joy I want, I don't know, really. / There rings the bell, — and all is clarified; / M...»
«I am bored with perpetual verbiage on all that is fine and gracious; / All these chats only make me feel weary and yawn... / Leaving the pedants I run to converse with you, dear friend; / I know that these eyes of yours, the wise dark black eyes, / Have more beauty in them than hundreds of f...»
«I fell in love with you one amber day / When, born in azure glow / From every twig, its thanks to say, / Warm languor trickling would flow. White as hop blooms, lake waves foamed and rolled, / So white their bodies fair. / The laughing Lel the love-god pulled / The sunbeams of black hai...»
«Oh, how I loved you, land that bore me, / My Russia, freedom’s motherland, / When under whip you languished sorely, / Stayed silent did your people grand. Your faith was wild and quite unseeing, / For resurrection long your wait! / And now that prison’s gates are freeing, / I see yo...»