Part 24 (2/2)
Keep stirring my imagination, My heart's inertia vivify, More often to my corner fly.
Let not a poet's soul be frozen, Made rough and hard, reduced to bone And finally be turned to stone In that benumbing world he goes in, In that intoxicating slough Where, friends, we bathe together now.25
CHAPTER VII.
Moscow, Russia's favourite daughter, Where is your equal to be found?
Dmitriyev One can't but love one's native Moscow.
Baratynsky 'Reviling Moscow! This is what
You get from seeing the world!
Where is it better, then?
Where we are not.'
Griboyedov1
1.
Chased by the vernal beams, already Down the surrounding hills the snow Has run in turbid streams that eddy On to the flooded fields below; Nature, not yet from sleep returning, Greets with a smile the new year's morning.
The skies s.h.i.+ne with a bluish sheen, Transparent still, the woods turn green, Lending the trees a downy cover, The bee flies from its waxen comb, Bringing the meadows' tribute home.
The dales dry out and colour over.
Herds low, the hush of darkness brings The nightingale that newly sings.
2.
How sad to me is spring's arrival, Season of love, when all's in bud!
What languid tumult, what upheaval Disturb my soul, disturb my blood!
With what a heavy, tender feeling I revel in the season, breathing The vernal wind that fans my face In some secluded, rural place!
Or am I now estranged from pleasure, Does all that gladdens, animates, All that exults and radiates Cast boredom, languor in like measure Upon a soul long dead, does all Seem dark to it, funereal?
3.
Or, cheerless, when the leaves of autumn Are resurrected by the spring, We recollect a bitter fortune, Hearing the woods' new murmuring; Or we, in troubled contemplation Compare with nature's animation The withered years of our estate, That nothing can resuscitate.
Perhaps in thought we may recover, When caught in a poetic haze, Some other spring of older days That once more sets our hearts aquiver With dreams of some far distant clime, A wondrous night, a moon sublime...
4.
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