With heavy anguish, hopeless straining,
The bonds of love I would remove.
Oh, to be loosed from their enchaining!
Oh, freedom, only not to love!
The soul that shame and fear are scourging
Crawls through a mist of dust and blood.
From dust, great God, my spirit purging,
Oh, spare me from love's bitter flood!
Is pity's wall alone unshaken?
I pray to God, I cry in vain,
More weary, by all hope forsaken;
Resistless love grows great again.
There is no freedom, unforgiven,
We live as slaves, by life consumed;
We perish, tortured, bound and driven,
Promised to death, and to love — doomed.
С усильем тяжким и бесплодным
Я цепь любви хочу разбить.
О, если б вновь мне быть свободным,
О, если б мог я не любить!
Душа полна стыда и страха,
Влачится в прахе и крови,
Очисти душу мне от праха,
Избавь, о Боже, от любви!
Ужель непобедима жалость?
Напрасно Бога я молю:
Всё безнадежнее усталость,
Всё бесконечнее люблю.
И нет свободы, нет прощенья.
Мы все рабами рождены,
Мы все на смерть и на мученья
И на любовь обречены.
«These evenings over the restaurants / The air is hot and strangely cloying, / And shouts drift from the drunkards’ haunts / On the putrid breath of spring. Far off, over dusty side streets can be seen — / Over snug villas mile on mile — / The golden flint of a baker’s sign, / An...»
«I Darkness — and white / Snow hurled / By the wind. The wind! / You cannot stand upright / For the wind: the wind / Scouring God’s world. The wind ruffles / The white snow, pulls / That treacherous / Wool over the wicked ice. / E...»
«To G. Chulkov I wander more and more about the city. / More and more see Death. And I smile / A reasonable smile. Well, what of that? / So I would have it. It is my nature thus to know / That death will come to me too, in its time. I walked along the road beside the races. / The golden d...»
«With this evening lake I hold discourse in the high / Harmony of song. In the slender thicket / Of high pines, from ramparts of sand, / From among graves and tombs where icon-lamps / Shine, and dusk is a smoky blue-gray, I send her loving songs. / She does not see me, nor need she. / Li...»