O Lake Saimaa, you beautiful maiden, my boat you were swaying,
Swayed the lively and spirited skiff that like arrow was sharpened,
Heard a lullaby’s bliss did my soul in the watery spraying,
Saw away in the distance, like sisters, deserted escarpments.
Kalevala’s primordial refrains they were everywhere playing:
Hewn in iron and in boulder, a song of titanium’s lustre.
And a sandbank, as if it were cut by an evening shaft straying,
On a water mill’s purple gleamed bride with a virginal bluster.
Silent arrows were falling as if from a drunken sun’s spinning
To the depths they descended, and silent, the depths they ignited,
As an overripe apple, from tree of the garden’s beginning,
And too dazzling the sun was as stars in the heavens were lighted.
Having landed my boat on the silver lush beach I was walking;
Quite how long and to whom I was praying I cannot remember…
Boundless Saimaa with torrents of lava appeared to be stalking,
Vapour settled and billowed white silent on surface’s ember.
О, красавица Сайма, ты лодку мою колыхала,
Колыхала мой челн, челн подвижный, игривый и острый.
В водном плеске душа колыбельную негу слыхала,
И поодаль стояли пустынные скалы, как сестры.
Отовсюду звучала старинная песнь — Калевала:
Песнь железа и камня о скорбном порыве Титана.
И песчаная отмель — добыча вечернего вала, —
Как невеста, белела на пурпуре водного стана.
Как от пьяного солнца бесшумные падали стрелы
И на дно опускались и тихое дно зажигали,
Как с небесного древа клонилось, как плод перезрелый,
Слишком яркое солнце — и первые звезды мигали,
Я причалил и вышел на берег седой и кудрявый;
Я не знаю, как долго, не знаю, кому я молился...
Неоглядная Сайма струилась потоками лавы,
Белый пар над водою тихонько вставал и клубился.
«Irreparably white the page. Long hours / Spent vainly at a desk. Of warmth and Nice / Smell the mimosa's tiny, yellow flowers. / Caught by the moon's white ray, a large bird flies. It's bedtime, and my long hair plaiting tightly — / As though it mattered!- out the window I, / No longer ...»
«My heart beats smoothly, steadily, / What are long years to me? / Under the Galernaya arch, / Our shadows, for eternity. Through half-closed eyelids, / I see, I see that you’re with me, / And forever held in your hand / Is my unopened fan. Because we stood together, / In that bless...»
«As a silver, delicate strand / Is woven in my dark tresses — / Only you, silent nightingale, / Can understand this torment. Your sensitive ear hears distance, / In the willow’s thin branches, / Ruffled, you gaze — without breathing — / If a strange song sounds. But a moment ag...»
«Gold dovecote by waters, / Tender and dazzlingly green; / A salt-breeze sweeps away / The gondola’s narrow wake. Such sensitive, strange eyes in the streets, / The bright toys in the shops: / A lion with a book, on a lace pillow, / A lion with a book, on a marble pillar. As in an anc...»