Striking clock welcomes autumn to town:
This year notably heavy and hard,
Fallen fruit hits the ground, and the count
Is the number of fruit in the yard.
With this music, important and clear,
Who repeats that the clock must still go?
The old garden performs with no fear
Looking strangely indifferent though.
Nature’s downcast mood looking tender,
Love and kinship get easy to see.
As if you were no random bystander,
But the culprit of its jubilee.
Бьют часы, возвестившие осень:
тяжелее, чем в прошлом году,
ударяется яблоко оземь —
столько раз, сколько яблок в саду.
Этой музыкой, внятной и важной,
кто твердит, что часы не стоят?
Совершает поступок отважный,
но как будто бездействует сад.
Всё заметней в природе печальной
выраженье любви и родства,
словно ты — не свидетель случайный,
а виновник ее торжества.
«Along that road where brave Donskoi / once led his mighty host to war, / where the wind's mindful of the foe, / the moon's a crescent of yellow, / I walked as if in ocean deep... / The sweet briar so perfumed the air / as if 't were speech itself so rare; / and I was apt at last to mee...»
«Delightful, after all the wind and frost / to warm myself beside the fire; / but there I failed to guard my heart / and someone stole it in desire. The New Year celebrations linger, / the roses' stems are soft and moist; / but in my breast no longer sings / the whirring of dragonflies' ...»
«Did he send no swan for me, / did he send no boat, no dark raft? / He promised in the spring of 'sixteen / that he would come without delay. / I'd fly to him like a bird in the spring / of nineteen sixteen, he said. / Through darkness and death I'd come to his perch / and touch his sho...»
«I pray to the slender shaft of light / that pierces the window, pale and straight. / Since morning I have not spoken; / today my heart in two is broken. / The shiny brass on my wash-stand / has turned to verdigris of late. Yet the light that plays upon it / is a gladness to behold. / ...»