Autumn
(fragment)
What nimble thoughts do not then brim my sleep-drowned mind?
Derzhavin
I
October’s long been here—and the grove’s already shaking
From off its naked boughs the leaves that cling there still;
The road grows harder as it feels the fall wind’s raking.
The stream still runs its course and babbles past the mill,
But icebound lies the pond; my neighbor now is taking
His hunting pack in haste to fields far over hill,
The fall crop suffers from their wild and reckless playing,
And drowsing woods are startled by the hound’s sharp baying.
II
The Autumn is my time: Spring’s never to my taste;
The weary thaw, the slush, the reek—spring sets me sneezing;
My blood is roused, by sadness heart and mind oppressed.
Gruff Winter by my seasoned count is far more pleasing,
I love her snows; when by the moon your sleigh glides fast
And free and light—there is your sweetheart’s ardor teasing;
How fresh and warm she is, wrapped in that sable bed,
She grips your hand, she trembles, and her cheeks glow red.
III
How gay, our boots now shod with well-honed iron crescents,
To glide across the frozen rivers’ mirror-glow!
And when the sparkling holidays demand our presence?…
But draw the line; full half a year of snow on snow—
When all is said and done, the very burrow’s tenant,
The bear, grows bored with that. We can’t forever go
A-sleighing with Armidas, however young and handsome,
Or sour at the stove, behind a double transom.
IV
O Summer fair! Alas, my love for you might grow,
Were not your heat and dust, your insects so assailing.
All higher sentiments of ours you soon bring low,
You harrow us, we wither like the meadows parched and failing.
How best to slake our thirst, how cool refreshment know,
No other thoughts have we—Dame Winter’s end bewailing,
With wine and pancakes having sent her on her way,
We make her requiem with ice and with sorbet.
V
The days of waning Autumn almost none admires,
And yet, dear reader, I’ll admit to you I’m drawn
To her calm beauty, to her softly glowing fires;
A slighted child, of whom her family’s not fond,
She lures me to her side. If anyone inquires,
With Autumn’s days alone I feel a joyous bond.
She offers much that’s good; a not vainglorious lover,
I find my fancy really quite enamoured of her.
VI
How to explain this? She appeals to me, I think,
As might perhaps a delicate consumptive lass be
Appealing just to you. Condemned in death to sink,
Her days without revolt or rage serenely passing,
Her fading lips are smiling. And, on its very brink,
The chasm she sees not, her peril not yet grasping;
Life’s crimson tincture on her visage yet may play.
Alive this moment, but tomorrow—lifeless clay.
VII
Enchantment of the eyes! O sweet yet mournful season,
Your splendors as they fade grow dear, and make me glad—
For in her waning days is Nature sumptuous, pleasing,
The forests all in crimson and in gold are clad;
Beneath their shade—the wind-rush, and a freshness breathing,
With coils of swirling haze are now the heavens spread,
A ray of sun is rare, the early frosts come searing,
And other still-faint signs disclose gray winter’s nearing.
VIII
I bloom anew each time the leaves come whirling down;
Our frigid Russian air for me is healthy, bracing;
Anew I come to love my habits’ daily round:
Sleep, wakefulness and hunger come in timely pacing;
With joy and lightness in my heart the humors bound,
I’m young again and blithe—desires through me are racing,
Again I brim with life—such is my organism.
(Kind reader, pardon this intrusive prosaism.)
IX
They bring my horse to me, and through the distant clearing
With flowing mane a-toss, he bears his rider on,
Beneath his gleaming hoof resounds with icy pealing
The valley floor, now frozen, and the crackling pond.
But then the brief day wanes, the hearthside embers yielding
A fiery glow—it brightly flares and then is gone,
But slowly gone—and here before it I sit reading,
The while with long-spun thoughts my fancy feeding.
X
And I forget the world—in sweet serenity
Then sweetly am I lulled by my imagination,
And thereupon does poetry awake in me:
My soul is stirred, opressed by lyric agitation,
It shivers and it chimes, and seeks, as in a dream,
To issue forth at last in streams of free creation.
And many guests then visit me in unseen swarm,
All old acquaintances, my musings gave them form.
XI
And through my slumbering mind do thoughts then boldly caper,
And nimble, flowing rhymes to meet them lightly course,
My eager fingers long for pen, my pen for paper,
An instant more—and forth comes freely flowing verse.
Thus sleep-drowned lies a ship becalmed in breathless vapor,
But look!—the boatswain calls, the crewmen stir, disperse,
Swarm up and down the masts, with sails at full wind’s power
The giant now awakes, the cresting swell devours.
XII
It sails. Where shall we sail?………………
………………………………………………..
The Bronze Horseman
A Petersburg Tale
(The event described in this tale is based on fact. Details of the flood have been borrowed from contemporary journals. The curious may have recourse to the acccount captured by V. N. Berkh)
FOREWORD
Upon a shore of trackless waves
Stood HE; immersed in thoughts, his gaze
Was fixed afar. The river’s current
Rushed broadly by. A skiff made way
Along it on some lonely errand.
Along the mossy, marshy strand
Small blackened huts were wont to stand
In which the starveling Finn took cover,
And forest—midst this darkened land
Where mist-cloaked sun but dimly hovered—
Still murmured ‘round.
And thus HE thought:
From here the prideful Swede we menace,
Here shall a city-fort be wrought
To forge our haughty neighbor’s penance.
Here Fate and Nature both ordain
We mount a westward window-pane,
Stand fast beside this ocean channel.
New flags, through once uncharted swells
To visit us now Fate compels,
And we shall keep our feast untrammeled.
A hundred years the city stood,
Once fledgling fort, now Northlands’ wonder,
From marshy fen and shady wood
It rose in all its pride and splendor;
Where once, Creation’s foster-child,
The Finn in humble skiff would wallow,
As he, alone on shorelines wild,
Cast wide upon the empty billow
His tattered nets—those shores along,
Now newly animate, there thr
ong
Our comely mansions, lofty spires.
A horde of ships comes here to berth
From every corner of the Earth,
Each one rich mooring now requires.
In granite garments goes Neva;
Above it bridges arc, suspended;
With verdant gardens greenly splendid
Are nowadays her islands clad.
And now before this youthful city
Old Moscow dips her age-dimmed shield,
Thus to a new queen is befitting
That royal Dowager should yield.
I love Thee, Peter’s true creation,
I love Thy grave and graceful cast,
Neva’s majestic undulation
Within its stone embankments clasped,
Thy iron railings’ artful twining,
Thy midnights, pensive, dimly lit—
Transparent dusk and moonless shining—
When I within my chamber sit,
And write or turn to reading, lampless,
As clearly gleam the sleeping mansions
Along Thine empty streets, and bright
The Admiralty mast’s alight,
When all nocturnal shade forbidding
Upon the golden skies to lour,
One dawn hies to another’s bidding,
And bates to night but half an hour.
I love thy winters cruelly bracing,
Their frosts, that bite when no wind blows,
The sleighs that by Neva go racing,
Girls’ cheeks more bright than any rose.
The flash, the stir of ballroom chatter,
The hiss as goblets foam and flow
When bachelors meet to feast and clatter,
The flaming punch, its pale blue glow.
I love the war-like animation
Where strife is play in Martial fields,
When Foot and Horse troops clash and wheel,
Their pleasing, ordered coloration
As in their serried ranks they sway,
Their flags, victorious though tattered,
The gleam upon their helms of copper,
Shot through and riddled in the fray.
I love Thee, Russia’s bastion-city,
Thy ramparts’ smoke and fearsome roar
When Northland’s Queen—a gift most fitting—
A scion to the scepter bore,
When triumph o’er the foe once more
Rossiya hymns with joyful voices,
Or when Neva sheds Winter’s vise,
And casts asea her dark blue ice.
And, sensing vernal days, rejoices.
Be splendid then, Great Peter’s Port,
Unshakable, as is our nation.
The elements Thy favor court,
Untamed and wild from their creation,
The Finnish billows’ will to thwart,
Their ancient quarrels, be forgotten.
Let not their fury ill-begotten
Disquiet Peter’s timeless dream!
A time of terror it has been,
Still fresh in painful recollection …
Of it, my friends—for amity—
I now take up my retrospection.
My story will be full of woe.
PART I
Above a gloomy Petrograd November breathed the chill of autumn. Confined by handsome granite banks and splashing them with noisy billows, Neva was thrashing like a patient in a bed that gives no ease. It grew quite late and dark, the raindrops lashed the panes as if in anger. A doleful wind was blowing, howling. Young Evgeny by this time had left his friends and started home. I think we’ll have our hero carry that name, it has a sound that’s pleasing to the ear; and what is more, my pen has long been easy with its sound. His surname we won’t need, though ages past it may perhaps have borne a luster, once resounding (thanks here to Karamzin) down through the annals of our native land. But nowadays it’s quite forgotten by le monde and our young man lives in Kolomna, holds his place, avoids the swells and doesn’t vex his head about his sleeping sires, or times forgotten long ago.
Thus, once at home, Evgeny shed his cloak, undressed, and went to bed. But it was long before he slept, as many troubling thoughts beset him. What were these thoughts? The fact that he was poor, and therefore through much labor would be constrained to win himself both independence and repute: that Heaven might have granted him more gold and wit—he had encountered God knows, his share of lucky clods, of muddle-headed layabouts who had an easy row to hoe, while he’d logged just two years in service. He noticed then the storm was not abating, and the river’s crest had risen, was still rising, that some bridges must be down by now. Parasha and himself for two days, maybe three, must now be parted. Evgeny sighed a heartfelt sigh, sank deep in dreams, as poets do:
“To marry? Well, why ever not? It is, of course, a solemn step, but what of that—I’m young and hale, I’ll gladly toil from morn to evening. Somehow or other I’ll procure a simple, quiet little nest and lodge Parasha snugly there. I’ll put in one more year, perhaps, then get a better berth—and let Parasha manage family matters and raise our sons and daughters … With her hand in mine we’ll start life’s journey, and go our ways, until we die, a grandchild then may bury us …”
Such were his dreams. And all that night he felt oppressed, and willed—but vainly—the wind to howl less gloomily, the rain to beat upon the pane less angrily …
His weary eyes no sooner closed in sleep than the stormy mists of night dispersed, and pallid dawn announced the day… A frightful day!
All night Neva had battled seawards, fought the storm, yet failed to overcome its wild caprice … and lost the will to struggle … That dawn then found the river’s banks aswarm with teeming crowds. They marveled at the spray, the towering waves, the waters’ wrathful foam. But now Neva, its outlet to the gulf debarred by lashing northers, surged backwards in its course, enraged, aggrieved, and flooded all the isles; the weather rose from bad to worse, the swollen spate set up a roar, it seethed and steamed, a mighty cauldron—then suddenly in bestial frenzy, fell on the city. And before it all at once took flight, retreated, and all was empty—then the waters found their way into the vaults and rose to flood canals. Petropolis was whelmed like Triton, wading waist-deep in the main.
Assault! Attack! Malignant waves like thieves break through the window casements, as prows of empty boats now smash the glazing. Now hawker’s trays with awnings sodden, with bits of shops, of beams and roofs, the goods attained through prudent trade, and destitution’s faded trifles, and bridges borne off by the tempest, and coffins washed from flooded tombs—all swim the streets!
The people see God’s wrath and bide His rod. Alas! All vanished, food and hearth, and shelter! What can we do?
In that same year of dread did Russia’s Tsar, now gone. with all due glory reign. He stepped onto his balcony, cast down and grieved. He said “To countermand what God ordains no Tsar has warrant.” He pensive sat, with mournful eye he gazed on this calamity. The city squares now stood like lakes, and streets into them broadly rushed like rivers, wild. The palace loomed, resembling then a gloomy island. From end to end, from streets nearby and far, the Tsar sent word: despite the peril of the rising spate, his generals set out to save the city folk, bemused by terror, and drowning at their very hearthsides.
Then—on the square that bore great Peter’s name, just where a new built mansion had been raised up, and on its perron crouched, with paws up thrust, two Lion sentries keeping watch—astride now on a beast of marble, Evgeny sat, his arms crossed on his breast, immobile, hatless, pale. Poor man, his heart was overcome by deadly fear. Not for his own sake. He did not hear the now voracious wave that rose to lick his soles, nor heed the rain that lashed his features, nor yet the wildly howling wind that suddenly had filched his hat. His gaze, full of a bleak despairing, was fixed in one and only one direction, did not turn aside. Like mountains from the depths, bestirred and angered still, the waves reared up. Most fiercely then
the wind was howling, wreckage churned … Great Heaven!
Alas—just on that very spot, right where those savage waves now break, just on the Gulf, had stood a fence in need of paint, a willow tree, the shabby cote where they had lived, the widow and her child, Parasha, his sweetest hope! Or but a dream? Is human life, perhaps, an empty vision, a thing of nothingness, a joke on Heaven’s part that Earth must bear? And he, as if bewitched, as if enchained upon the marble Lion, cannot dismount. Around him now is nothing to be seen but waves! And with its back to him, uplifted on a height as yet unshaken, above Neva now sorely vexed, still looms with mighty arm outstretched the Idol on his steed of bronze.
PART II
But then, well sated with destruction, weary of this crude rebellion, Neva crept backwards, as she made her way surveyed with pride her doings; and heedlessly she let her booty drop. So might a highwayman, who with his savage band storms through a town: he breaks and enters, slashing, he crushes and despoils; then—shrieks and gnashing, rapine, fear and howls!… Yet burdened by his spoil, and fearing close pursuit, at last he falters. And now the bandits hurry homeward, dropping loot along the way.
The water ebbed, the pavement came to light once more, and our young man makes haste, his spirit quailing as he goes—with hope, with dread and longing—straight to the river, barely tamed. Yet prideful of their victory, the waters seethed in malice, just as if beneath them flames still burned, the foam still overspread them as before. Neva drew ragged breath, a charger returned from battle. My Evgeny looks, espies a skiff—thank God! He runs towards it, calls the boatman to his aid, who scorns the risk and for a mite agrees to ferry him across the fearsome billows.
Worlds Apart Page 10
