Alexander Pushkin
I visited again...

                                                          ...I visited again
That corner of the earth where once I spent,
In placid exile, two unheeded years.
A decade's gone since then — and in my life
There have been many changes — in myself,
Who from the general law am not exempt,
There have been changes, too — but here once more
The past envelops me, and suddenly
It seems that only yesterday I roamed
These groves.
                       Here stands the exile's cottage, where
I lived with my poor nurse. The good old woman
Has passed awayno longer do I hear
Through the thin wall her heavy tread as she
Goes on her busy rounds.
                                          Here is the hill
Upon whose wooded crest I often sat
Motionless, staring down upon the lake —
Recalling, as I looked, with melancholy,
Another shore, and other waves I knew...
Among the golden meadows, the green fields,
It lies as then, that blue and spacious lake:
A fisherman across its lonely waters
Is rowing now, and dragging after him
A wretched net. Upon the sloping shores
Are scattered hamlets — and beyond them there
A mill squats crookedly — it scarcely stirs
Its wings in this soft wind...
                                                      Upon the edge
Of the ancestral acres, on the spot
Where the rough road, trenched by the heavy rains,
Begins its upward climb, three pine trees rise —
One stands apart, and two are close together,
And I remember how, of moonlight nights,
When I rode past, their rustling greeted me
Like a familiar voice. I took that road,
I saw the pines before me once again.
They are the same, and on the ear the same
Familiar whisper breaks from shaken boughs,
But at the base, beside their aged roots
(Where everything had once been bare and bald),
A glorious young grove had risen up,
A verdant family; the bushes crowd
Like children in their shadow. And apart,
Alone as ever, their glum comrade stands,
Like an old bachelor, about whose feet
There stretches only bareness as before.
I hail you, race of youthful newcomers!
I shall not witness your maturity,
When you shall have outgrown my ancient friends,
And with your shoulders hide their very heads
From passers-by. But let my grandson hear
Your wordless greeting when, as he returns,
Content, lighthearted, from a talk with friends,
He too rides past you in the dark of night,
And thinks, perhaps, of me.

Translated by Babette Deutsch