A sail drifts white and on its own
Amid the light blue ocean haze.
What does it seek in distant country?
What made it leave its native bays?
The billows play. The winds are whistling
Down at the bending, creaking mast
Oh! This one seeks no happy ending
And does not flee a happy past.
Below, a brighter stream than azure.
Above, the golden sunray flows,
Yet this one, restive, quests for tempests
As if in tempests were repose.
Белеет парус одинокой
В тумане моря голубом!..
Что ищет он в стране далекой?
Что кинул он в краю родном?..
Играют волны — ветер свищет,
И мачта гнется и скрыпит...
Увы! он счастия не ищет,
И не от счастия бежит!
Под ним струя светлей лазури,
Над ним луч солнца золотой...
А он, мятежный, просит бури,
Как будто в бурях есть покой!
«As Darkness descends on the ocean, / As Night spreads her silvery veil, / A brigantine cuts through the waters / And glides downwind at full sail. Her tall topsail masts are not bending, / Her vanes are not moved by the air, / Her cannons face open deck hatches / With silent indifferent...»
«When our decrepit energies turn traitor, / when, like former tenants, / we let our house to the young, / save us then, good spirit, / from faint-hearted reproaches, / from slander, from animosity / at our changing life, / from feelings of suppressed spite / at the world which is bein...»
«When waning strength of soul and body / Does hint that our fate is sealed, / And we, old-timers, must be ready / Our kingdom to new-comers yield, — Then kindly spare us, o good genius, / The craven, cowardly reproach, / The slander, and the spite continuous / At our life’s decrepit ...»
«We always only dream about happiness, however, / It’s everywhere. And perhaps it is / These trees behind the barn wrapped into autumn weather, / And through my window a softly flowing breeze. In the endless sky there rises white and wispy / Edge of a shining cloud. Quite for long / I’...»