«Futile gift, so unexpected — / Life, why were you brought to me? / Rather, why are you subjected / To a brutal penalty? What unfriendly power brought me / Into being from nothingness, / Filled my soul with passion, wrought me / Doubts and qualms and faithlessness? No ambitions stand ...»
«Life, the gift so idle and random, / Why 're you given to me at all? / Or, else, why must you abandon / Me, condemned to deadly call? What cruel force has called me, raising / From nonentity to light, / Filled my soul with passion blazing, / Stirred with doubt my eager mind?.. Void's m...»
«Based on pure chance, a useless gift, / A life — why was it given to me? / And why did furtive fate so swift / My life to end in death decree? What power hostile in intent / Called me from Lethe’s mephitism, / Made my soul's essence passion-bent, / But roiled my mind with skeptici...»
«They run like a throng of gypsies, / chasing after the long-fingered Paganini, / one with a Czech sneeze, another with a Polish dance, / and still another with a Hungarian refrain. Comfort me with your playing, / proud little prodigy / whose sound is broad as the Yenisey, / little Polis...»