With Leeuwenhoek's magic device
Science discovered
Signs of astonishing life
On the surface of a water-drop.
The realm of birth and death
Is the link in an endless chain,
In this world of wondrous creations,
It's so minute and plain!
Except the abyss, where meteors fly,
Nothing is grand or simple,
And the expanses are equally boundless
For planets, microbes, and people.
As a result of their common effort,
The flame of Pleiades is fanned.
Comets fly more light-winged,
Constellations speed as planned.
In a corner of a miniscule universe,
Under a microscope's screen,
Fate's secret sets in motion
That same immutable stream.
There, I sense the breathing of a star,
Hear the speech of organic masses,
And the headlong rush of creation,
So familiar to us as it passes.
Сквозь волшебный прибор Левенгука
На поверхности капли воды
Обнаружила наша наука
Удивительной жизни следы.
Государство смертей и рождений,
Нескончаемой цепи звено, —
В этом мире чудесных творений
Сколь ничтожно и мелко оно!
Но для бездн, где летят метеоры,
Ни большого, ни малого нет,
И равно беспредельны просторы
Для микробов, людей и планет.
В результате их общих усилий
Зажигается пламя Плеяд,
И кометы летят легкокрылей,
И быстрее созвездья летят.
И в углу невысокой вселенной,
Под стеклом кабинетной трубы,
Тот же самый поток неизменный
Движет тайная воля судьбы.
Там я звездное чую дыханье,
Слышу речь органических масс
И стремительный шум созиданья,
Столь знакомый любому из нас.
«I don't disturb, I do not sing / With a woman's poison. Hand / That is loyal I give to you — / Right one, that will hold the pen. That, with which I form the cross / In the beauty of the night. / That, with which the things that God / Did command to me I write. My left hand is daring...»
«Out on horseback in the stillness. / Hooves resounding in the snow. / Only crows in dusty shrillness / Cackled in the meadow’s glow. Held by unseen fable’s rapture, / Forest slept beneath the drifts. / There in kerchief’s frozen capture / Pine displayed her snowy shifts. Crone-li...»
«Don’t distort your smile, away with teasing hands — / For I love another — off with your demands. Tell the truth, you know it — know it very well — / My regard’s not yours — another’s cast her spell. Passer-by I was. My heart’s not really here — / Only loitered then th...»
«On distant place my dreams are set / Where all can hear the cries and sobbing, / To share in alien sorrow’s net / And anguished grieving’s painful throbbing. For there, I’m sure that I can find / Delight in life and exaltation, / And there, escaping fortune’s bind, / I’ll cast...»