Thank you for everything. For the war,
For the revolution and exile.
For the indifferent bright country
Where we now ‘drag out our existence’.
There is no sweeter destiny than to lose everything.
There is no happier fate than to become a vagabond.
And you’ve never been closer to heaven
Than here, tired of boredom
Tired of breathing,
Without strength, without money,
Without love,
In Paris...
За все, за все спасибо. За войну,
За революцию и за изгнанье.
За равнодушно — светлую страну,
Где мы теперь "влачим существованье".
Нет доли сладостней — все потерять.
Нет радостней судьбы — скитальцем стать,
И никогда ты к небу не был ближе,
Чем здесь, устав скучать,
Устав дышать,
Без сил, без денег,
Без любви, в Париже...
«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...»