No More Learning

XLI

Fresh aspirations I have known,
I am acquainted with fresh care,
Hopeless are all the first, I own,
Yet still remains the old despair.
Illusions, dream, where, where your sweetness?
Where youth (the proper rhyme is fleetness)?
And is it true her garland bright
At last is shrunk and withered quite?
And is it true and not a jest,
Not even a poetic phrase,
That vanished are my youthful days
(This joking I used to protest),
Never for me to reappear--
That soon I reach my thirtieth year?

XLII

And so my noon hath come! If so,
I must resign myself, in sooth;
Yet let us part in friendship, O
My frivolous and jolly youth.
I thank thee for thy joyfulness,
Love's tender transports and distress,
For riot, frolics, mighty feeds,
And all that from thy hand proceeds--
I thank thee. In thy company,
With tumult or contentment still
Of thy delights I drank my fill,
Enough! with tranquil spirit I
Commence a new career in life
And rest from bygone days of strife.

XLIII

But pause! Thou calm retreats, farewell,
Where my days in the wilderness
Of languor and of love did tell
And contemplative dreaminess;
And thou, youth's early inspiration,
Invigorate imagination
And spur my spirit's torpid mood!
Fly frequent to my solitude,
Let not the poet's spirit freeze,
Grow harsh and cruel, dead and dry,
Eventually petrify
In the world's mortal revelries,
Amid the soulless sons of pride
And glittering simpletons beside;

XLIV

Amid sly, pusillanimous
Spoiled children most degenerate
And tiresome rogues ridiculous
And stupid censors passionate;
Amid coquettes who pray to God
And abject slaves who kiss the rod;
In haunts of fashion where each day
All with urbanity betray,
Where harsh frivolity proclaims
Its cold unfeeling sentences;
Amid the awful emptiness
Of conversation, thought and aims--
In that morass where you and I
Wallow, my friends, in company!


END OF CANTO THE SIXTH



CANTO THE SEVENTH

Moscow

Moscow, Russia's darling daughter,
Where thine equal shall we find? '
Dmitrieff

Who can help loving mother Moscow?
Baratynski (Feasts)

A journey to Moscow! To see the world!
Where better?
Where man is not.
Griboyedoff (Woe from Wit)


Canto The Seventh

[Written 1827-1828 at Moscow, Mikhailovskoe, St. Petersburg
and Malinniki. ]

I

Impelled by Spring's dissolving beams,
The snows from off the hills around
Descended swift in turbid streams
And flooded all the level ground.
A smile from slumbering nature clear
Did seem to greet the youthful year;
The heavens shone in deeper blue,
The woods, still naked to the view,
Seemed in a haze of green embowered.
The bee forth from his cell of wax
Flew to collect his rural tax;
The valleys dried and gaily flowered;
Herds low, and under night's dark veil
Already sings the nightingale.

II

Mournful is thine approach to me,
O Spring, thou chosen time of love!
What agitation languidly
My spirit and my blood doth move,
What sad emotions o'er me steal
When first upon my cheek I feel
The breath of Spring again renewed,
Secure in rural quietude--
Or, strange to me is happiness?
Do all things which to mirth incline.
And make a dark existence shine
Inflict annoyance and distress
Upon a soul inert and cloyed? --
And is all light within destroyed?

III

Or, heedless of the leaves' return
Which Autumn late to earth consigned,
Do we alone our losses mourn
Of which the rustling woods remind?
Or, when anew all Nature teems,
Do we foresee in troubled dreams
The coming of life's Autumn drear.