I view the promised land before me, —
Gleaming of waters, tents of trees.
But anger of the Lord forbore me
To touch the dower I long to seize.
I rose from heat and sandy places,
I tasted death in living hours:
My strength so wanes, that it effaces
Within my soul all placid powers.
And if my mournful-tuned ovation
Is chanted to that glad domain,
I shape a hymn of salutation,
Not for my own, but others' gain.
Я вижу край обетованный,
Сверканье вод, шатры дерев.
Но преступить предлог желанный
Мне запретил Господний гнев.
Устал я от песков и зноя,
Еще при жизни смерть вкусил.
Так изнемог, что для покоя
В моей душе нет больше сил.
И если радостному краю
Поет привет мой грустный стих,
Я гимн приветственный слагаю
Не для себя, а для других.
«In Spring, along a waving stalk, a fly / Ascending sees set high / Above her on a flower, / A bee, ensconced as in a bower; / And haughtily remarks: — "A busy state is yours / That all the day from morn to eve, duU work endures! / Called to vexatious toil, I might indeed have faint...»
«The sullen rain / cast a glance / askance. / Beyond the still / clear grille — / the iron reasoning of wires strung overhead — / a featherbed. / And on it / rested lightly / the legs of rising stars. / But as / the streetlamps — tsars / in crowns of gas — / began t...»
«With those broad brims, jackets long and spruce, / With notebooks full of verses — all your own, / So long ago to ashes you reduced, / Like blooms of lilac, off its branches blown. There, where you are, to form is nothing bound, / All things are blurred, disjoined, vague and shapeless. /...»
«Among the other children in the flock / She, with her reddish mass of matted hair, / A worn-out smock tucked into pants threadbare, / Resembles suddenly an awkward baby frog — / With lips so thin, and teeth all shaped so wrongly, / With features pinched, and face so plain and homely. To...»