Not like other people, not every week,
Not all the time, in a century but twice,
I prayed to you: please intelligibly
Reiterate the words of creation.
Unbearable to you are the admixtures
Of intimacies and people's slavishness.
How could you possibly make me happy?
With what would you consume the earth's salt?
Не как люди, не еженедельно,
Не всегда, в столетье раза два
Я молил тебя: членораздельно
Повтори творящие слова.
И тебе ж невыносимы смеси
Откровений и людских неволь.
Как же хочешь ты, чтоб я был весел,
С чем бы стал ты есть земную соль?
«Cease thy song, nightingale, / Here before my window! / Fly away, nightingale, / To my village grove. / And there light on the window / Of my sweetheart-love. / Sing to her there a song / Of my anguish, pain. / Say I wither, I die, / Here away from my lass, / As in autumn cold ra...»
«At my cheerless table / I a-musing sit: / How is one to be / In the world alone? / I, a stalwart youth, / Have no wife, no mate; / I, a stalwart youth, / Want a loving friend. / Want a harrow, share; / Want a kindly hearth; / Want a barn well-stocked, / And a good plo...»
«Pull, my gray one, pull now! / Turning o’er the black clods, / Mother-earth will burnish / White the iron ploughshare. / / Blushing dawn, the fair one, / Lo! on the bright horizon; / From the waking woodland / Comes the sun in glory. / / Joyous rolls the ploughland! / ...»
«When from thy shame, degrading, dark, I drew / Thy fallen spirit out with words of flame; / And thou, with wringing hands, in anguish deep, / Didst curse the sin that compassed thee about; / When thou didst lash thy conscience, late and dull, / With story of thy past, confessing all ...»