Don’t seduce me into captivity,
Don’t entice me with hearth and home,
Don’t immure me living and breathing
Inside four walls.
There’s no chamber for which a poet
Would exchange her homelessness, –
That’s why the cuckoo cuckoos
That she hasn’t got a nest.
Ты уютом меня не приваживай,
Не заманивай в душный плен,
Не замуровывай заживо
Меж четырех стен.
Нет палаты такой, на какую
Променял бы бездомность поэт, —
Оттого-то кукушка кукует,
Что гнезда у нее нет.
«There is no name for thee! / ’Tis beyond all mortal cunning / To reveal what charm is thine. There is no lyre for thee! / What can song do? 'tis false witness / Come too late with news of thee. If we could only hear / What the heart says, what a power / Would be in its hymn to thee! ...»
«You were before me, / Standing in silence; / Your face was downcast / And deep in thought. / It made me think of / The past we loved so. / That was the last time / It saw this world here. / Away you vanished, / A silent angel. / Today your grave is / Quiet as heaven. / There ...»
«And have you heard the singer in the night? / His song of love, his song of love despairing? / His plaintive pipe, his lonely vigil sharing? / In silent fields, before the morning light, / Have heard him there? And have you met him in the darkling wood? / The singer from the grave, alone,...»
«When I embrace / your slender forms / And tender words / Of love and praises / Pour out to you / In exultation. / In silence from my tight embrace / You free yourself / And answer / With a mistrustful smile; / Your memory has promptly stored / Of all the stories of treacheries,...»