Russian Lyrics Part 15

NADSON.

IN MAY

To you,--you beggars in the forests proud,-- To pastures free, my hasting foot returns!

The May is come! It smiles and laughs aloud-- For Love's desire, freedom's bliss, it yearns.

Erased the marks of city slavery, Here where the sun gleams gold through azure hours-- Here wrests the spirit from all bondage free, The fields grown green and the syringa flowers!

Storms only, brought my youthful morning red, And night of soul and wilderness of pains-- All in my breast is hushed and numb and dead, The pulsing fever stopped within my veins; Yet here, where Nature winds a wreath for me, The arms stretch forth,--the weary glance devours-- And the arrested soul exults and sings, The fields grow green and the syringa flowers!

NADSON.

IN MEMORY OF N.M.D.

Slumber soft,--oh thou my heart's beloved!

Death alone can bring eternal rest, And in death alone 'neath tearless lashes Shall thine eyes forever close be pressed; In thy grave, no more with fevered doubting Shall thy golden head tormented be, In thy grave alone, thou'lt never long for All that life so cruel robbed from thee.

Through the gra.s.s, white yet thy coffin s.h.i.+ning-- O'er thy grave the cross is looming white, As in silent prayer unto the heavens Mournful gleaming through the cold blue night.

Now with tears my eyes are overflowing, Hotter tears I ne'er before have wept-- All the bitter sorrows I have suffered In one sobbing cry together swept.

Spring across the fields will be returning With her silver nightingales, ere long-- Through the dusky nights of silence piercing E'en thy grave with her inspiring song, And the lindens whispering, will murmur-- Breathless die away, and sighing cease, But thou--slumber soft my heart's beloved, Death alone can bring eternal peace!

NADSON.

AT THE GRAVE OF N.M.D.

Forsaken am I now anew, Night's sombre wings o'er me descending, As tearless, meditating, dumb-- Above thy grave's low mound I'm bending.

Naught offers recompense for thee, No hopes console or fears betray-- For whom now live I in this world?

For whom on earth now shall I pray?

NADSON.

IN DREAMS

In my dreams I saw heavens bespangled, With silvery stars all adorned, And pale green sorrowing willows Drooping low o'er the pale blue pond.

I saw in syringa embowered A cottage, and thou my heart's Dove-- And bowed was thy little curly head, My beautiful sad pale Love!

Thou wert weeping, the teardrops s.h.i.+ning Were flowing from thy yearning gaze, For love the roses wept also, For joy sobbed the nightingale.

And every tear found consoling-- A greeting from near and from far, The garden was lit by a glow worm, Enraptured the heavens a star!

NADSON.

THE OLD GREY HOUSE

Thou hospitable old grey house,--A greeting unto thee!

With thy red ochre roofs,--vine trellised o'er; The gardens fair laid forth in blooming luxury, The fields in glinting beads of dew stretched endlessly, Beneath the sun's fresh kiss a gilded floor!

A silvery ribbon through the flowering green-- The icy billows of the river foam, Above her clay-white strand are verdant arbours seen, Spun o'er with leaf.a.ge, through the waking land between, And where the azure river's currents roam.

Prattling, the river lisps of love and of repose-- And in the distance s.h.i.+mmers, faintly dies; A flower, secret listening as its message flows, A roguish kiss of grat.i.tude in fragrance blows, While beckoning stars smile from the silent skies.

I greet thee, home and mother! Joys now charm anew That I believed but once to me were given; Thee I forsook,--and now my last expiring view Turns back from fruitless conflict to thy vision true, Love, no more mine, nor hope nor peace of heaven!

Mother and home, I greet thee! O caress thy child Whom weariness, regret, despair a.s.sail-- With sighing of thy groves in the soft wind beguiled, With sunbeams of thy Springtime smiling fair and mild, And with the liquid song of nightingales!

Let me once only weep in the a.s.surance blest That I am not girt round with human scorn, Let me but sleep once more upon thy gentle breast, Forgetting in my childish, deeply-dreaming rest The loss and failure of my life forlorn!

NADSON.

CALL HIM NOT DEAD

Call him not dead,--he lives!

Ah you forget Though the pyre lies in ruin the fires upward sweep, The string of the harp is broken but her chords still weep, The rose is cut but it is blooming yet!

NADSON.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

ALEXANDER SERGJEWITSCH PUSHKIN was born at Moscow, May 26, 1799. His first poetical influence came from his nurse who taught him Russian tales, legends and proverbs, and to whom, with loving recognition, he was grateful to the end of his life. His grandmother and this nurse taught him to read and write. In his seventh year he began the study of foreign languages; German, French,--which was as his mother tongue to him,--and mathematics, which he hated. At nine the pa.s.sion of reading possessed him and he devoured his father's library, which included the French erotics, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists. His own first poetical work was indeed written in French. In 1811 he was sent to the school then just opened, at Tzarskoe Selo near Petersburg. Here, however, he learned little, the students being more interested in drinking bouts and platonic relations with barmaids and actresses; in spite of which the art of poetry was wors.h.i.+ped and Pushkin with others among his friends published a journal in ma.n.u.script that circulated their own contributions. He was later graduated from the Alexandrovsky Lyceum, the highest and most splendid civil school of that time, and entered the department of Foreign Affairs. Although he retained his entire sympathy with the poetic brotherhood, he now frequented the salons of the t.i.tled aristocracy and gave himself up to the vortex of luxurious society. Because of his political satires and too free opposition to the government, he was sent away from Petersburg in 1820, and attached to the Governor of the South Russian Colonies. Here he fell ill and went to the Caucas for recovery. It was in the Crimea that he learned to know and wonder over Byron. He remained three years in Kischinew,--in the service chiefly of wine, women and cards. In 1823 he went to Odessa as attache of the General Governor Count Woronzow, whom he pursued with biting epigram,--until in 1824 the poet of "Russlan and Ludimilla" was removed from the service and banished to his mother's estates by order of the Tsar Alexander I.

These two years of unwilling retirement worked mightily upon the soul of Pushkin so filled with storm and stress. He struck off the chains of Byron and steeped himself in Shakespeare; writing at this period his drama of Boris G.o.dunow. Nicholas First amnestied the poet and recalled him to Moscow, inst.i.tuting himself censor of all future work; likewise placing Pushkin under the all-powerful Chief of Police Count Benkendorff, from whom Lermontoff later had also so much to suffer. In 1829 Pushkin went to the Caucas and with the Russian army to Erzum. In 1830 he inherited from his father the management of But Boldino, where he finished "Onegin," and three other dramas. In 1831 he was married at Moscow to Natalie Nikolajewa Gontsharowa, whose beauty had for three years held him in her toils. In the same year he was appointed to the foreign office again. In 1833 the poem was published that won him his fatal commission. Pushkin fell, as did Lermontoff later, a victim of the envy and hatred of high society. At this time many responsible positions were held in Russia by Frenchmen who had fled the terrors of the revolution. Such a French emigre was D'Anthes, who pursued the wife of Pushkin with his compromising attentions, until at a ball the poet was almost forced to challenge him. The pistol duel, that Count Benkendorff with cunning foresight did nothing to prevent, took place June 27, 1837.

In two days the poet was free from his tormentors forever. He was buried in the Swatjatorgorische cloister and statues have been erected to his honor at Petersburg, Moscow and many other cities throughout Russia. His service to Russian literature can only be compared with that of Dante for Italy,--since there was practically no Russian poetry before Pushkin and he may be said to have created the Russian language as it is spoken to-day.

MICHAIL JURJEWITSCH LERMONTOFF was born October 14, 1814, at Moscow.

From his father he inherited the love of brilliant society, from his mother the love of music and an unusually sensitive temperament. When he was but two and a half years old his mother died and he became the idol of his grandmother, by whom he was spoiled, until the wilfulness of youth became the arrogance and domineering quality so distinguis.h.i.+ng his maturity. Being a delicate child, his grandmother took him at the age of ten to the Caucas,--which he deeply loved ever after. In 1827 he was placed in the Adelige Pension at Moscow, having been previously much influenced by a German nurse who inspired him with a love of German legend and poetry, and also by his tutor, an officer in the Napoleonic guard, who had taught him French. Up to 1831 he was under the German unfluence [Transcriber's note: sic] in literature, but then he came under the influence of Byron, and from this time he was never free of the impression of the poet so congenial to his own spirit and nature. In 1830 he was matriculated by the Moscow University as a student of moral and political science. In 1832 he went to what is now the Nicolai Military school in Petersburg, where he wrote his censurable and erotic poems that were pa.s.sed about by thousands and won an immense popularity with the jeunesse dore of the time, but which were regarded as discreditable by the more serious and thoughtful society. In November, 1832, he was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Life Guard Hussar regiment, and the young poet now plunged into the vortex of society life as Pushkin had before him. In 1836 appeared his "Song of the Tsar Ivan Wa.s.siljewitsch,"--a truly cla.s.sical achievement in the record of literature. In 1837 came the poem on the death of Pushkin, that stirred the aristocratic world and caused his banishment to the Caucas by the Emperor Nicholas I. In April of the year 1840 he was again banished to the Caucas for his duel with the son of the historian de Barante, where he distinguished himself by his valor in conflict with the Tscherkes. In February of 1841 we find the poet again at Petersburg, where the second edition of his masterpiece, "A Hero of Our Own Time," was just appearing. Yet toward the end of April again he was obliged to leave,-- this time through the influence and hatred of the Countess Benkendorff.