Attractive smiles of hers were meant
The Poet’s love to tantalize,
It wasn’t love that's backward sent
By his appriciating eyes:
It was a lovely gracious dream,
Light dream of His imagination.
It wasn't love: Apollo's beam
Served for the poet's inspiration.
А. С. Пушкину
Она улыбкою своей
Поэта в жертвы пригласила,
Но не любовь ответом ей,
Взор ясный думой осенила.
Нет, это был сей лёгкий сон,
Сей тонкий сон воображенья,
Что посылает Аполлон
Не для любви, для вдохновенья.
«Don’t give me all of your time, / don’t question me so often. / With eyes so true and faithful / don’t try and catch my hands. Don’t follow in the Spring / my steps through pools of rain. / I know that of our meeting / nothing will come again. You think it’s pride that makes ...»
«We now observe the rules of winter, / and on the snow impose design / and, in play restraining laughter, / we scoop the white snow from the ground. And then, as if foreseeing ill, / pedestrians crowd about the fence; / an anxious question gnaws at them: / what are they doing, this odd c...»
«Blue was the morning. It was early yet. / Tormented Moscow was still sleeping. / Through the windows, / through the double panes, / Bells suddenly could be heard ringing. And glancing at the sky in fear, / I saw, / through the mist there / from afar, black monks jostling their way... ...»
«By the Moscow River, in Gluboki Street, / Dulcineas peer from windows, / waiting for their Don Quixotes to return / from work, / and from bubbling barley / they compose soups on a blue flame. / Time’s aged them slightly — cares weigh on their eyelids, but... / the Don Quixotes are ...»