Fyodor Tyutchev
In early autumn sweetly wistful...

In early autumn sweetly wistful,
there is a short but wonderous interim,
when days seem made as though of crystal,
with evenings luminously dim...

Without their tillers, empty fields look wider;
where sickles ravaged in the harvester’s ebb,
a single thread left by a spider
still speaks of the unravelled web.

Warblers have gone, afraid of future shadows,
yet far away is winter’s firstborn storm,
and heaven pours its azure, pure and warm,
on quietly resting fields and meadows...

Translated by Anatoly Liberman