No, never think, my dear, that in my heart I treasure
The tumult of the blood, the frenzied gusts of pleasure,
Those groans of hers, those shrieks : a young Bacchante's cries,
When writhing like a snake in my embrace she lies,
And wounding kiss and touch, urgent and hot, engender
The final shudderings that consummate surrender.
How sweeter far are you, my meek, my quiet one,
By what tormenting bliss is my whole soul undone
When, after I have long and eagerly been pleading,
With bashful graciousness to my deep need conceding,
You give yourself to me, but shyly, turned away,
To all my ardors cold, scarce heeding what I say,
Responding, growing warm, oh, in how slow a fashion,
To share, unwilling, yet to share at last my passion!
Нет, я не дорожу мятежным наслажденьем,
Восторгом чувственным, безумством, исступленьем,
Стенаньем, криками вакханки молодой,
Когда, виясь в моих объятиях змиёй,
Порывом пылких ласк и язвою лобзаний
Она торопит миг последних содроганий!
О, как милее ты, смиренница моя!
О, как мучительно тобою счастлив я,
Когда, склоняяся на долгие моленья,
Ты предаёшься мне нежна без упоенья,
Стыдливо-холодна, восторгу моему
Едва ответствуешь, не внемлешь ничему
И оживляешься потом всё боле, боле —
И делишь наконец мой пламень поневоле!
«y noon heat in a dale in Dagestan, / A bullet in my breast, my body lay; / Deep was the wound and steaming even yet, / My blood was dripping drop by drop away. I lay alone upon the valley sands. / Clustered above my head, the cliffs were steep, / Their tawny summits scorched under the sun...»
«My damask dagger with a soul of steel, / I love you! Comrade chill and bright, / Forged by a brooding Georgian for revenge. / A free Circassian honed you for the fight. A lily-hand brought you to me in parting, / A keepsake of a time too brief / And then for once not blood flowed down you...»
«Here where barbarians knelt in Roman court / Stands the basilica: original / As joyous Adam, stretching nerves, the tall / Groined archway bunches muscle as for sport. But things outside betray the secret plan: / A pact of arch and buttress here forestalls / The heavy mass from flattening...»
«Distant, the stars indifferently glimmered, / illumining the winding of the Road. / Out past a turn there stood the Mount of Olives, / and at its foot the river Kedron flowed. The meadow broke off halfway from the end. / Reaching beyond, the Milky Way was there. / The silver-ashen olive t...»