Nightlong the water labored breathlessly.
Till morning came, the rain burned linseed oil.
Now vapor from beneath the lilac lid
Pours forth: earth steams like shchee that's near the boil.
And when the grass, shaking itself, leaps up.
Oh, who will tell the dew how scared I am —
The moment the first cock begins to yawp.
And then one more, and then — the lot of them?
They name the years as these roll by in turn,
And on each darkness, as it goes, they call.
Foretelling thus the change that is to come
To rain, to earth, to love — to each and all.
Всю ночь вода трудилась без отдышки.
Дождь до утра льняное масло жег.
И валит пар из-под лиловой крышки,
Земля дымится, словно щей горшок.
Когда ж трава, отряхиваясь, вскочит,
Кто мой испуг изобразит росе
В тот час, как загорланит первый кочет,
За ним другой, еще за этим все?
Перебирая годы поименно,
Поочередно окликая тьму,
Они пророчить станут перемену
Дождю, земле, любви - всему, всему.
«Beneath blue skies of her own country, she / Fell languishing and withering, / Faded at last; and her young shade, maybe, / Already touched me with its wing. / Between us is a line impassable. / In vain I tried to wake my sense. / I heard indifferent lips of her death...»
«The heavy clouds at length are scattering. / O Star of sorrow, star of evening, / Thy ray has silvered the fast-fading plain, / The quiet gulf, the black rocks of the main. / I love thy feeble light in the far heaven, / It wakes old thoughts now unto slumber given. / Have I not seen thee...»
«Last cloud of a storm that is scattered and over, / Alone in the skies of bright azure you hover, / Alone with sad shadows you float on your way, / Alone you throw gloom on the joy of the day. By you all the heaven was lately confounded, / You were with the hideous lightning surrounded, / ...»
«Until the poet hears Apollo’s / Call to the hallowed sacrifice, / The petty cares of life he follows, / And sunk in them his spirit lies. / His holy lyre remains unsounded; / His spirit sleeps in numbing rest, / By an unworthy world surrounded, / Himself perhaps unworthiest. But onc...»