O blazing Muse of pure satire!
Come forth on my inviting call!
I do not need the thundering lyre,
Give me the scourge of Juvenal!
And neither lifeless imitators
Nor hungry, gluttonous translators,
Nor rhymesters, unsatisfied,
Shall fester from my pen tonight.
Peace to the poets, poor creators,
Peace to the journal’s adulators,
Peace to the fools who have been tamed!
But rascals, you I’ll put to shame, —
Come forth you villains, don’t resist!
And everyone I’ll punished then
But if by chance one I shall miss,
Please do remind me, gentlemen!
How many faces -- shameless-pale,
How many forehands — dull and stale,
Stand here, all ready to acquire
The timeless imprint of my lyre!
О муза пламенной сатиры!
Приди на мой призывный клич!
Не нужно мне гремящей лиры,
Вручи мне Ювеналов бич!
Не подражателям холодным,
Не переводчикам голодным,
Не безответным рифмачам
Готовлю язвы эпиграмм!
Мир вам, несчастные поэты,
Мир вам, журнальные клевреты,
Мир вам, смиренные глупцы!
А вы, ребята подлецы, —
Вперёд! Всю вашу сволочь буду
Я мучить казнию стыда!
Но если же кого забуду,
Прошу напомнить, господа!
О, сколько лиц бесстыдно-бледных,
О, сколько лбов широко-медных
Готовы от меня принять
Неизгладимую печать!
«Stop boasting, time, that men are but your shadows / That all their grandeur just reflects your own. / ’Tis men that lend their glory to their epoch, / Aye, men illumine time with their renown. Be grateful to the poet, thinker, hero, / Who sheds on us the light of soul and mind. / The e...»
«O Time, you pursue me with legions of terrors / With painful disclosure, disfavour, dismay; / Today you denounce me for Yesterday's errors / And smash my delusions like castles of clay. Who knew that old truths were so easily shaken? / Then why do you laugh at me, why such unkindness? / I...»
«Sometimes, I feel that all those fallen soldiers, / Who never left the bloody battle zones, / Have not been buried to decay and molder / But turned into white cranes that softly groan. And thus, until these days since those bygone times, / They still fly in the skies and gently cry. / Isn...»
«I dream at times that all our friends and brothers / Who perished on the bloody battle plains / Have not been laid to rot in earth, but rather / Reincarnated as white-feathered cranes. They to this minute since that moment distant / Fly greeting us in wordless birdly cries, / And this is ...»