Works of Alexander Pushkin (4 page)

Your threats are loud; now, try and prove as loud in deed!
Think ye, the aged hero, sleeping in his bed,
No more has strength to wield the sword of Ismail?
Or that the word of Russian Tsar has weaker grown?
Or have we ne’er with Europe warred,
And lost the victor’s cunning skill?
Or are we few? Erom shores of Perm to southern
Tauris,
From Finnish cliffs of ice to fiery Colchis,
From Kremlin’s battered battlements
As far as China’s circling wall,
Not one shall fail his country’s call!
Then send, assemblies of the West,
Your fiercest troops in full array!
In Russian plains we’ll find them place
To sleep with those who fell before!

GOD GRANT, MY REASON NE’ER BETRAY ME

God grant, my reason ne’er betray me;
Nay, better, fever-waste or want.
Nay, better, toil and starve.

‘Tis not that I my mind or wit
Have e’er prized high, or that with them
I were not glad to part.
If but my freedom were untouched,
With joy and gladness would I make
My home in forest dark.

With raving frenzy I should sing,
Myself forget, and lose my soul
In weird discordant dreams.

Strength uncontrolled would then be mine,
Like wildest storm that sweeps the fields,
And lays the forest bare.

Then I should hearken song of waves,
Be filled with joy, and gaze upon
The empty, vacant sky.

Ay, there’s the rub: to lose my mind,
Be feared, as men do fear the plague,
And close in prison locked:

And when the madman’s chained, in crowds
They’ll come, and through the grating stare,
And tease the surly beast.

And then, at night, compelled to hear,
Instead of nightingale’s high note,
Or forest’s murmur soft,

The frantic shrieks of prison-mates,
Muttered oaths of warders sullen,
And creaking noise of chains.
 

THE TALISMAN

Where fierce the surge with awful bellow
Doth ever lash the rocky wall;
And where the moon most brightly mellow
Dost beam when mists of evening fall;
Where midst his harem’s countless blisses
The Moslem spends his vital span,
A Sorceress there with gentle kisses
Presented me a Talisman.

And said: until thy latest minute
Preserve, preserve my Talisman;
A secret power it holds within it —
‘Twas love, true love the gift did plan.
From pest on land, or death on ocean,
When hurricanes its surface fan,
O object of my fond devotion!
Thou scap’st not by my Talisman.

The gem in Eastern mine which slumbers,
Or ruddy gold ‘twill not bestow;
‘Twill not subdue the turban’d numbers,
Before the Prophet’s shrine which bow;
Nor high through air on friendly pinions
Can bear thee swift to home and clan,
From mournful climes and strange dominions —
From South to North — my Talisman.

But oh! when crafty eyes thy reason
With sorceries sudden seek to move,
And when in Night’s mysterious season
Lips cling to thine, but not in love —
From proving then, dear youth, a booty
To those who falsely would trepan
From new heart wounds, and lapse from duty,
Protect thee shall my Talisman.

THE MERMAID

Close by a lake, begirt with forest,
To save his soul, a Monk intent,
In fasting, prayer and labours sorest
His days and nights, secluded, spent;
A grave already to receive him
He fashion’d, stooping, with his spade,
And speedy, speedy death to give him,
Was all that of the Saints he pray’d.

As once in summer’s time of beauty,
On bended knee, before his door,
To God he paid his fervent duty,
The woods grew more and more obscure:
Down o’er the lake a fog descended,
And slow the full moon, red as blood,
Midst threat’ning clouds up heaven wended —
Then gazed the Monk upon the flood.

He gaz’d, and, fear his mind surprising,
Himself no more the hermit knows:
He sees with foam the waters rising,
And then subsiding to repose,
And sudden, light as night-ghost wanders,
A female thence her form uprais’d,
Pale as the snow which winter squanders,
And on the bank herself she plac’d.

She gazes on the hermit hoary,
And combs her long hair, tress by tress;
The Monk he quakes, but on the glory
Looks wistful of her loveliness;
Now becks with hand that winsome creature,
And now she noddeth with her head,
Then sudden, like a fallen meteor,
She plunges in her watery bed.

No sleep that night the old man cheereth,
No prayer throughout next day he pray’d
Still, still, against his wish, appeareth
Before him that mysterious maid.
Darkness again the wood investeth,
The moon midst clouds is seen to sail,
And once more on the margin resteth
The maiden beautiful and pale.

With head she bow’d, with look she courted,
And kiss’d her hand repeatedly,
Splashed with the water, gaily sported,
And wept and laugh’d like infancy —
She names the monk, with tones heart-urging
Exclaims “O Monk, come, come to me!”
Then sudden midst the waters merging
All, all is in tranquillity.

On the third night the hermit fated
Beside those shores of sorcery,
Sat and the damsel fair awaited,
And dark the woods began to be —
The beams of morn the night mists scatter,
No Monk is seen then, well a day!
And only, only in the water
The lasses view’d his beard of grey.

ANCIENT RUSSIAN SONG

I.

The windel-straw nor grass so shook and trembled;
As the good and gallant stripling shook and trembled;
A linen shirt so fine his frame invested,
O’er the shirt was drawn a bright pelisse of scarlet
The sleeves of that pelisse depended backward,
The lappets of its front were button’d backward,
And were spotted with the blood of unbelievers;
See the good and gallant stripling reeling goeth,
From his eyeballs hot and briny tears distilling;
On his bended bow his figure he supporteth,
Till his bended bow has lost its goodly gilding;
Not a single soul the stripling good encounter’d,
Till encounter’d he the mother dear who bore him:
O my boy, O my treasure, and my darling!
By what mean hast thou render’d thee so drunken,
To the clay that thou bowest down thy figure,
And the grass and the windel-straws art grasping?
To his Mother thus the gallant youth made answer:
‘Twas not I, O mother dear, who made me drunken,
But the Sultan of the Turks has made me drunken
With three potent, various potations;
The first of them his keenly cutting sabre;
The next of them his never failing jav’lin;
The third of them his pistol’s leaden bullet.

II.

O rustle not, ye verdant oaken branches!
Whilst I tell the gallant stripling’s tale of daring;
When this morn they led the gallant youth to judgment
Before the dread tribunal of the grand Tsar,
Then our Tsar and Gosudar began to question:
Tell me, tell me, little lad, and peasant bantling!
Who assisted thee to ravage and to plunder;
I trow thou hadst full many wicked comrades.
I’ll tell thee, Tsar! our country’s hope and glory,
I’ll tell thee all the truth, without a falsehood:
Thou must know that I had comrades, four in number;
Of my comrades four the first was gloomy midnight;
The second was a steely dudgeon dagger;
The third it was a swift and speedy courser;
The fourth of my companions was a bent bow;
My messengers were furnace-harden’d arrows.
Replied the Tsar, our country’s hope and glory:
Of a truth, thou little lad, and peasant’s bantling!
In thieving thou art skill’d and giving answers;
For thy answers and thy thieving I’ll reward thee
With a house upon the windy plain constructed
Of two pillars high, surmounted by a cross-beam.

III.

O thou field of my delight so fair and verdant!
Thou scene of all my happiness and pleasure!
O how charmingly Nature hath array’d thee
With the soft green grass and juicy clover,
And with corn-flowers blooming and luxuriant.
One thing there is alone, that doth deform thee;
In the midst of thee, O field, so fair and verdant!
A clump of bushes stands — a clump of hazels,
Upon their very top there sits an eagle,
And upon the bushes’ top — upon the hazels,
Compress’d within his claw he holds a raven,
And its hot blood he sprinkles on the dry ground;
And beneath the bushes’ clump — beneath the hazels,
Lies void of life the good and gallant stripling;
All wounded, pierc’d and mangled is his body.
As the little tiny swallow or the chaffinch,
Round their warm and cosey nest are seen to hover,
So hovers there the mother dear who bore him;
And aye she weeps, as flows a river’s water;
His sister weeps as flows a streamlet’s water;
His youthful wife, as falls the dew from heaven —
The Sun, arising, dries the dew of heaven.

Poems Translated by Ivan Panin

POEMS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

MON PORTRAIT

Vous me demandez mon portrait,
Mais peint d’après nature:
Mon cher, il sera bientôt fait,
Quoique en miniature.

Je sais un jeune polisson
Encore dans les classes:
Point sot, je le dis sans façon
Et sans fades grimaces.

Onc, il ne fut de babillard,
Ni docteur de Sorbonne
Plus ennuyeux et plus braillard
Que moi-même en personne.

Ma taille à celle des plus longs
Los n’est point égalée;
J’ai le teint frais, les cheveux blonds,
Et la tête bouclée.

J’aime et le monde, et son fracas,
Je hais la solitude;
J’abhorre et noises et débats,
Et tant soit peu l’étude.

Spectacles, bals me plaisent fort,
Et d’après ma pensée
Je dirais ce que j’aime encore,
Si je n’étais au lycée.

Après cela, mon cher ami,
L’on peut me reconnâitre:
Oui! tel que le bon Dieu me fit,
Je veux toujours parâitre.
Vrai demon pour l’espièglerie,

Vrai singe par sa mine,
Beaucoup et trop d’étourderie, —
Ma foi — voilà Poushkine.

MY PEDIGREE

WITH scorning laughter at a fellow writer,
In a chorus the Russian scribes
With name of aristocrat me chide:
Just look, if please you... nonsense what!
Court Coachman not I, nor assessor,
Nor am I nobleman by cross;
No academician, nor professor,
I’m simply of Russia a citizen.

Well I know the times’ corruption,
And, surely, not gainsay it shall I:
Our nobility but recent is:
The more recent it, the more noble ‘t is.
But of humbled races a chip,
And, God be thanked, not alone
Of ancient Lords am scion I;
Citizen I am, a citizen!

Not in cakes my grandsire traded,
Not a prince was newly-baked he;
Nor at church sang he in choir,
Nor polished he the boots of Tsar;
Was not escaped a soldier he
From the German powdered ranks;
How then aristocrat am I to be?
God be thanked, I am but a citizen.

My grandsire Radsha in warlike service
To Alexander Nefsky was attached.
The Crowned Wrathful, Fourth Ivan,
His descendants in his ire had spared.
About the Tsars the Pushkins moved;
And more than one acquired renown,
When against the Poles battling was
Of Nizhny Novgorod the citizen plain.

When treason conquered was and falsehood,
And the rage of storm of war,
When the Romanoffs upon the throne
The nation called by its Chart —
We upon it laid our hands;
The martyr’s son then favored us;
Time was, our race was prized,
But I... am but a citizen obscure.

Our stubborn spirit us tricks has played;
Most irrepressible of his race,
With Peter my sire could not get on;
And for this was hung by him.
Let his example a lesson be:
Not contradiction loves a ruler,
Not all can be Prince Dolgorukys,
Happy only is the simple citizen.

My grandfather, when the rebels rose
In the palace of Peterhof,
Like Munich, faithful he remained
To the fallen Peter Third;
To honor came then the Orloffs,
But my sire into fortress, prison —
Quiet now was our stem race,
And I was born merely — citizen.

Beneath my crested seal
The roll of family charts I’ve kept;
Not running after magnates new,
My pride of blood I have subdued;
I’m but an unknown singer
Simply Pushkin, not Moussin,
My strength is mine, not from court:
I am a writer, a citizen.

1830
.
 

MY MONUMENT

A MONUMENT not hand-made I have for me erected;
The path to it well-trodden will not overgrow;
Risen higher has it with unbending head
Than the monument of Alexander.

No! not all of me shall die! my soul in hallowed lyre
Shall my dust survive, and escape destruction —
And famous be I shall, as long as on earth sublunar
One bard at least living shall remain.

My name will travel over the whole of Russia great,
And there pronounce my name shall every living tongue:
The Slav’s proud scion, and the Finn, and the savage yet
Tungus, and the Calmuck, lover of the steppe.

And long to the nation I shall be dear:
For rousing with my lyre its noble feelings,
For extolling freedom in a cruel age,
For calling mercy upon the fallen.

The bidding of God, O Muse, obey.
Fear not insult, ask not crown:
Praise and blame take with indifference
And dispute not with the fool!

August, 1836.

MY MUSE

IN the days of my youth she was fond of me,
And the seven-stemmed flute she handed me.
To me with smile she listened; and already gently
Along the openings echoing of the woods
Was playing I with fingers tender:
Both hymns solemn, god-inspired
And peaceful song of Phrygian shepherd.
From morn till night in oak’s dumb shadow
To the strange maid’s teaching intent I listened;
And with sparing reward me gladdening
Tossing back her curls from her forehead dear,
From my hands the flute herself she took.
Now filled the wood was with breath divine
And the heart with holy enchantment filled.

1823
.
 

POEMS OF LOVE

THE STORM-MAID