The dull melancholy, and no one to offer a hand
In times of a destitute feeling…
The wishing!.. What good is to wish with no merit or end?
And years keep on passing — the ones most appealing!
To love... but then whom?.. For a time, isn’t worth the travail;
Forever, no love has the vigor.
To search in your heart? — There the past has dissolved with no trail:
The torments, the joys — all is empty and meager...
The passions?.. — But sooner or later the judgment comes by
To scatter their pains, sweet though flimsy;
And life, as you see it around with a passionless eye,
Is such a deflated and meaningless whimsy...
И скучно и грустно! — и некому руку подать
В минуту душевной невзгоды…
Желанья… что пользы напрасно и вечно желать?
А годы проходят — все лучшие годы!
Любить — но кого же? — на время не стоит труда,
А вечно любить невозможно…
В себя ли заглянешь? — там прошлого нет и следа,
И радость, и муки, и все там ничтожно.
Что страсти? — ведь рано иль поздно их сладкий недуг
Исчезнет при слове рассудка,
И жизнь, как посмотришь с холодным вниманьем вокруг —
Такая пустая и глупая шутка!
«Aren’t you the one who lights soul’s fire? / Uncovers all that it has hidden? / And did you not the song inspire / That mad and random comes unbidden? Have faith! I’ll give you back this life / When you unveil another chantry / To poet burdened by his strife, / From dark to light ...»
«And a bonfire high was soaring / Over him upon the cross. / Frigid stars are him ignoring, / Inky night disdains his loss. Spinners of the snowy winters, / Maidens of the night, pass by, / Eyes just open, tight like splinters, / See them twist the smoke’s thread high. And the height ...»
«Allow my soul’s burnt out redeeming, / The chance to glory in life’s course / And by my solitary dreaming / To joy in your undying force. You are divine, beyond comparing, / Your merriment and sorrow are / My sacred shrine, my heart’s declaring / My prophet’s calling from afar. ...»
«Never can I forget (but perhaps I’m mistaken): / How in sunset’s declining fire’s blaze / Bled the sky in its crimson demise as did waken / Night in yellowing lantern-lit glaze. By the window I sat in the crowded rotunda. / Somewhere fiddles scraped loving’s refrain. / And an ebon...»