My youth was hard to endure.
With so much sorrow to bear.
How can a soul this poor
Be returned to You rich and fair?
A song of praise, long and elegant,
The flattering fate sings fervent.
Lord, Almighty! I’m negligent,
Always Your miserly servant.
Not a rose, not a blade of grass
Will I be Your garden, Father.
I tremble at every speck of dust,
At each word that a fool may utter.
Дал Ты мне молодость трудную.
Столько печали в пути.
Как же мне душу скудную
Богатой Тебе принести?
Долгую песню, льстивая,
О славе поет судьба,
Господи! я нерадивая,
Твоя скупая раба.
Ни розою, ни былинкою
Не буду в садах Отца.
Я дрожу над каждой соринкою,
Над каждым словом глупца.
«to Alexei Surkov Remember, Alyosha, the roads of Smolenshchina, / Remember the rain and the mud and the pain, / The women, exhausted, who brought milk in pitchers, / And clasped them like babies at breast, from the rain. The whispering words as we passed them — "God bless you!" / The eye...»
«to Valentina Serova Above our submarine's black nose she rises — / That Venus, which is like no other star! / We men, long missing out on girls' caresses, / Await her like a woman from afar. Like you, each day she rises slightly later, / And as the heavenly bodies rise and sink, / Some...»
«to Valentina Serova If God in his almighty power / Called me to heaven when I died / And I was asked, at heaven's gate, / What I should choose to take inside, I should not want, in paradise, / A tedious girl of honest worth. / I'd take with me the very same / With whom I'd shared this ...»
«to Valentina Serova Don't be angry if I write / Only just from time to time, / Writing now, and then again, / Waiting till another time. Letters come in many forms: / Some are sick and some are sad, / Brilliant just occasionally, / Far more often very bad. Letters leave a lot unsaid, ...»