I thought my heart had lost the power
Of suffering love’s gentle pain:
I said, "The past, the fleeting hour
Comes not again, comes not again.
«They’ve gone, the raptures and the longing.
The flattering dreams that shone so bright. . . .»
But as I spoke, they came back thronging.
Called up by Beauty’s sovran might.
Я думал, сердце позабыло
Способность лёгкую страдать,
Я говорил: тому, что было,
Уж не бывать! уж не бывать!
Прошли восторги, и печали,
И легковерные мечты…
Но вот опять затрепетали
Пред мощной властью красоты.
«Love! Even convulsing, even in the grave, / I’ll get attentive — squint — get scared — and dart. / My dear! We’ll part in neither snowy caves / Nor in the graves of clouds shall we part! I have been blessed with these two gorgeous / Wings, and I refuse to load my heart with weig...»
«A path — into ether / Leaves the earth behind. / — Stop here, people! — / Adolescence is blind. / Higher and higher still! / Into the blue fields of rye! / — Stop! — or you will / Step on the sky.»
«I told her: the sidewalks are muddy, / The sky is gloomy, everyone is depressed... / I said that days are all the same / And make me sick at heart, / That balls, the theater — get on my nerves... / “Really?” I told her there’s cholera in the city, / So-and-so have pa...»
«Nothing but anniversaries, anniversaries... / Our liter reeks like a kitchen! / To judge by it, all Russia / Is teeming with great men: / After their deaths, it’s certain. / Following magnificent empty sanctimonies, / A hundred Pantheons / And a hundred Westminster Abbeys won’t suf...»