On a rainy autumn evening
Into desert places went a maid;
And the secret fruit of unhappy love
In her trembling hands she held.
All was still: the woods and the hills
Asleep in the darkness of the night;
And her searching glances
In terror about she cast.
And on this babe, the innocent,
Her glance she paused with a sigh:
"Asleep thou art, my child, my grief,
Thou knowest not my sadness.
Thine eyes will ope, and though with longing,
To my breast shalt no more cling.
No kiss for thee to-morrow
From thine unhappy mother.
Beckon in vain for her thou wilt,
My everlasting shame, my guilt!
Me forget thou shalt for aye,
But thee forget shall not I;
Shelter thou shalt receive from strangers;
Who'll say: Thou art none of ours!
Thou wilt ask: Where are my parents?
But for thee no kin is found.
Hapless one! with heart filled with sorrow,
Lonely amid thy mates,
Thy spirit sullen to the end
Thou shalt behold the fondling mothers.
A lonely wanderer everywhere,
Cursing thy fate at all times,
Thou the bitter reproach shalt hear ...
Forgive me, oh, forgive me then!
Asleep! let me then, O hapless one,
To my bosom press thee once for all;
A law unjust and terrible
Thee and me to sorrow dooms.
While the years have not yet chased
The guiltless joy of thy days,
Sleep, my darling; let no bitter griefs
Mar thy childhood's quiet life!"
But lo, behind the woods, near by,
The moon brings a hut to light.
Forlorn, pale, trembling
To the doors she came nigh;
She stooped, and gently laid down
The babe on the strange threshold.
In terror away she turned her eyes
And disappeared in the darkness of the night.
12. This also is a narrative poem; but it tells something more than a
story. A new element is here added. For it not only gratifies our
curiosity about the mother and the babe, but it also moves us. And it
moves not our low passion, but it stirs our high emotion. Not our anger
is here roused, as against the owner of the black shawl, but our pity is
stirred for the innocent babe; and even the mother, though guilty
enough, stirs our hearts. Here, too, as in the "Black Shawl," the art of
the narrator is perfect. The few touches of description are given only
in so far as they vivify the scene and furnish a fit background for the
mother and child. But the theme is already of a higher order, and in
rank I therefore place the "Outcast" one plane above the "Black Shawl."
13. The two poems I have just read you are essentially ballads; they
deal indeed with emotion, but only incidentally. Their chief purpose is
the telling of the story. I shall now read you some specimens of a
higher order of poetry,--of that which reflects the pure emotion which
the soul feels when beholding beauty in Nature. I consider such poetry
as on a higher plane, because this emotion is at bottom a reverence
before the powers of Nature, hence a worship of God. It is at bottom a
confession of the soul of its humility before its Creator. It is the
constant presence of this emotion which gives permanent value to the
otherwise tame and commonplace writings of Wordsworth. Wordsworth seldom
climbs the height he attains in those nine lines, the first of which
are:--
"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky."
But here Pushkin is always on the heights. And the first I will read you
shall be one in which the mere sense of Nature's beauty finds vent in
expression without any conscious ethical purpose. It is an address to
the last cloud.