Yes, I am alone. In the hour of parting
you foretold orphanhood for my soul.
Alone, just as man was in the universe
on the first day of creation!
But what you predicted, in futile anger,
isn’t fated to me alone —
the best and purest among us
reveal that they too feel like orphans.
And there’s nothing lofty or good about the one
who didn’t tremble, not even once,
grieving, at Tiutchev’s line:
“How can another understand you?”
Да, я одна. В час расставания
Сиротство ты душе предрек.
Одна, как в первый день создания
Во всей вселенной человек!
Но, что сулил ты в гневе суетном,
То суждено не мне одной, —
Не о сиротстве ль повествуют нам
Признанья тех, кто чист душой?
И в том нет высшего, нет лучшего,
Кто раз, хотя бы раз, скорбя,
Не вздрогнул бы от строчки Тютчева:
«Другому как понять тебя?»
«Whispering and timid breathings, / Nightingale's soft trill, / Silvery and rippling motion / Of the drowsy rill, Nightime radiance, nightime shadows, / Shadows' endless dance, / Magic sequences transforming / Love's dear countenance, ...»
«Amid the virgin maples and the weeping birches / Upon those arrogant pines to gaze I cannot brook; / The flocks of my sweet living daydreams they disturb, / Hateful to me their sober look. Amid the gathering of their reborn neighbours / It's they alone that stir not, whisper not, nor sigh, ...»
«Like a wavy cloud-shape, / Distant dust stirs there; / Mounted horseman, footman — / In the dust unclear. Someone I see that gallops, / Horsed, swift as the wind. / Friend, my friend far distant, / Call me back to mind.»
«(After a performance of 'Freischiitz') The silent theatre's dark. Agathe / Lies in her marksman's soft embrace. / The soul is swathed in melodies, / Luminous — and life a grace. All sleeps. And as the river gleams / The sky above the narrow street, / Far off, a wheel's sound dies away,...»