The woods have doff'd their garb of purply gold;
The faded fields with silver frost are steaming;
Through the pale clouds the sun, reluctant gleaming,
Behind the circling hills his disk hath roll'd.
Blaze brightly, hearth! my cell is dark and lonely:
And thou, O Wine, thou friend of Autumn chill,
Pour through my heart a joyous glow--if only
One moment's brief forgetfulness of ill!
Ay, I am very sad; no friend is here
With whom to pledge a long unlooked-for meeting,
To press his hand in eagerness of greeting,
And wish him life and joy for many a year.
I drink alone; and Fancy's spells awaken--
With a vain industry--the voice of friends:
No well-known footstep strikes mine ear forsaken,
No well-beloved face my heart attends.
I drink alone; ev'n now, on Neva's shore,
Haply my name on friendly lips has trembled....
Round that bright board, say, are ye _all_ assembled?
Are there no other names ye count no more?
Has our good custom been betray'd by others?
Whom hath the cold world lured from ye away?
Whose voice is silent in the call of brothers?
Who is not come? Who is not with you? Say!
_He_ is not come, he of the curled hair,
He of the eye of fire and sweet-voiced numbers:
Beneath Italia's myrtle-groves he slumbers;
He slumbers well, although no friend was there,
Above the lonely grave where he is sleeping,
A Russian line to trace with pious hand,
That some sad wanderer might read it, weeping--
Some Russian, wandering in a foreign land.
Art _thou_ too seated in the friendly ring,
O restless Pilgrim? Haply now thou ridest
O'er the long tropic-wave; or now abidest
'Mid seas with ice eternal glimmering!
Thrice happy voyage!... With a jest thou leapedst
From the Lyceum's threshold to thy bark,
Thenceforth thy path aye on the main thou keepedst,
O child beloved of wave and tempest dark!
Well hast thou kept, 'neath many a stranger sky,
The loves, the hopes of Childhood's golden hour:
And old Lyceum scenes, by memory's power,
'Mid lonely waves have ris'n before thine eye;
Thou wav'dst thy hand to us from distant ocean,
Ever thy faithful heart its treasure bore;
"A long farewell!" thou criedst, with fond emotion,
"Unless our fate hath doom'd we meet no more."
The bond that binds us, friends, is fair and true!
Destructless as the soul, and as eternal--
Careless and free, unshakable, fraternal,
Beneath the Muses' friendly shade it grew.
We are the same: wherever Fate may guide us,
Or Fortune lead--wherever we may go,
The world is aye a foreign land beside us;
_Our_ fatherland is Tsárkoë Seló!
From clime to clime, pursued by storm and stress,
In Destiny's dark nets long time I wrestled,
Until on Friendship's lap I fluttering nestled,
And bent my weary head for her caress....
With wistful prayers, with visionary grieving,
With all the trustful hope of early years,
I sought new friends with zeal and new believing;
But bitter was their greeting to mine ears.
And even here, in this lone dwelling-place
Of desert-storm, of cold, and desolation,
There was prepared for me a consolation:
Three of ye here, O friends! did I embrace.
Thou enteredst first the poet's house of sorrow,
O Pústchin! thanks be with thee, thanks, and praise
Ev'n exile's bitter day from thee could borrow
The light and joy of old Lyceum-days.
Thee too, my Gortchakóff; although thy name
Was Fortune's spell, though her cold gleam was on thee,
Yet from thy noble thoughts she never won thee:
To honour and thy fiends thou'rt still the same.
Far different paths of life to us were fated,
Far different roads before our feet were traced,
In a by-road, but for a moment mated,
We met by chance, and brotherly embraced.
When sorrow's flood o'erwhelmd me, like a sea;
And like an orphan, houseless, poor, unfriended,
My head beneath the storm I sadly bended,
Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee:
Thou camest--lazy child of inspiration,
My Délvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight
In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation;
And I was comforted, and bless'd my fate.
Even in infancy within us burn'd
The light of song--the poet-spell had bound us;
Even in infancy there flitted round us
Two Muses, whose sweet glamour soon we learn'd.
Even then _I_ loved applause--that vain delusion!--
_Thou_ sang'st but for thy Muse, and for thy heart;
_I_ squander'd gifts and life with rash profusion,
_Thou_ cherishedst thy gifts in peace apart.
The worship of the Muse no care beseems;
The Beautiful is calm, and high, and holy;
Youth is a cunning counsellor--of folly!--
Lulling our sense with vain and empty dreams....
Upon the past we gaze--the same, yet other--
And find no trace.--We wake, alas! too late.
Was it not so with us, Délvig, my brother?--
My brother in our Muse as in our fate!
'Tis time, 'tis time! Let us once more be free!
The world's not worth this torturing resistance!
Beneath retirement's shade will glide existence--
Thee, my belated friend--I wait for thee!
Come! with the flame of an enchanted story
Tradition's lore shall wake, our hearts to move;
We'll talk of Caucasus, of war, of glory,
Of Schiller, and of genius, and of love.
'Tis time no less for me ... Friends, feast amain!
Behold, a joyful meeting is before us;
Think of the poet's prophecy; for o'er us
A year shall pass, and we shall meet again!
My vision's covenant shall have fulfilling;
A year--and I shall be with ye once more!
Oh, then, what shouts, what hand-grasps warm and thrilling!
What goblets skyward heaved with merry roar!
Unto our Union consecrated be
The first we drain--fill higher yet, and higher!
Bless it, O Muse, in strains of raptured fire!
Bless it! All hail, Lyceum! hail to thee!--
To those who led our youth with care and praises,
Living and dead! the next we grateful fill;
Let each, as to his lips the cup he raises,
The good remember, and forget the ill.
Feast, then, while we are here, while yet we may:
Hour after hour, alas! Time thins our numbers;
One pines afar, one in the coffin slumbers;
Days fly; Fate looks on us; we fade away;
Bending insensibly to earth, and chilling,
We near our starting-place with many a groan....
Whose lot will be in old age to be filling,
On this Lyceum-day, his cup _alone_?
Unhappy friend! Amid a stranger race,
Like guest intrusive, that superfluous lingers,
He'll think of us that day, with quivering fingers
Hiding the tears that wet his wrinkled face....
O, may he then at least, in mournful gladness,
Pass with his cup this day for ever dear,
As even I, in exile and in sadness,
Yet with a fleeting joy, have pass'd it here!
* * * * *
In the following lines, the poet has endeavoured to reproduce the
impressions made upon his mind by the mountain scenery of the Caucasus;
scenery which he had visited with such rapture, and to which his
imagination returned with undiminished delight. It has been our aim to
endeavour, in our translation, to give an echo, however feeble and
imperfect, of the wild and airy freedom of the versification which
distinguishes these spirited stanzas. The picture which they contain,
rough, sketchy, and unfinished, as it may appear, bears every mark of
being a faithful copy from nature--a study taken on the spot; and will
therefore, we trust, be not unacceptable to our readers, as calculated
to give an idea not only of the vigorous and rapid _handling_ of the
poet's pencil, but also of the wild and sublime region--the Switzerland
of Russia--which he has here essayed to portray. Of the two furious and
picturesque torrents which Púshkin has mentioned in this short poem,
Térek is certainly too well known to our geographical readers to need
any description of its course from the snow-covered peak of Dariál to
the Caspian; and the bold comparison in the last stanza will doubtless
be found, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, not deficient in a kind
of fierce Æschylean energy, perfectly in character with the violent and
thundering course of the torrent itself:--