Winter Evening – Alexander Pushkin

Winter Evening
Alexander Pushkin

The storm covers skies in darkness,

Spinning snowy whirlwinds tight,

Now it wails like a beast wildest,

Now it cries like a week child,

Now suddenly it rustles

The old roof’s dry thatching mass,

Now, a traveller, late and gusty,

It knocks at our window’s glass.

Our hut, poor and unstable,

Is the dark and sad to feel.

Why, are you, my little old lady,

Silent at the window-sill?

Are you tired, o my dear,

By the howling of the storm,

Or just dozing while you hear

The still hum your spindle from?

Let us drink, o comrade, dear,

Of my youth, so poor and hard, –

‘Gainst our woe; is a cup here?

It will cheer the saddened heart.

Sing a song about a blue-tit,

Which, beyond the sea, lived well,

Or about the maiden, bloomed,

Who went early to a well.

The storm covers skies with darkness,

Spinning snowy whirlwinds tight;

Now it wails like a beast wildest,

Now it cries like a week child.

Let us drink, o comrade dear

Of my youth, so poor and hard, –

‘Gainst our woe; is a cup here?

It will cheer the saddened heart.

The Prophet – Alexander Pushkin

The Prophet

Alexander Pushkin

Through dark, athirst in soul and heart,

I roamed a desert in a daze

And where the pathways cross and part

I saw a six-winged Seraph blaze.

With moving Fingers soft as sleep

He brushed my eyes and they grew deep

Until they gaped with Prophecy

And saw as startled eagles see.

He brushed my ears wherein he poured

The noise of every thing that roared:

I heard the shudder of the sky,

The whir of angel hosts on high,

The stir of beasts below the sea

The vines that burgeoned round the Tree,

And, leaning to my lips, he wrung

From out of them my sinful tongue

Pitted with guile and perfidy;

And his Right Hand where blood was wet

Parted my palsied lips and set

A sapient Serpent’s sting in me,

And with a blade he slit my chest,

My quaking heart thereout he reft

And in the cleft within my breast

A coal alive with flame he left.

Then in the desert I was dead

Till God called unto me and said:

“Arise O Prophet! Hark to Me!

Go forth imbued with My desire

And take My Word by land and sea

To set the heart of Man afire.”

To The Beauty – Alexander Pushkin

To The Beauty
Alexander Puskin

She’s all just harmony and wonder,

Higher than passions and the world,

She rests, with her sweet shyness, under

Her beauty’s ritual abode;

She looks around self in silence:

There’re no contenders hers, no friends,

Our beauties’ circle, pale and blend,

Fades out in her dazzling brightness.

Wherever weren’t you hurry, yet,

Even to date with your beloved,

What sense with weren’t your heart upset,

Even with song of highest sound, –

But having met her in alarm,

You suddenly shall stop, embarrassed –

In ecstasy, like one of prayers,

Feeling the holiness of charm.

Winter Journey – Alexander Pushkin

I am so cold this morning. This seemed like a good choice from one of my favorite authors/poets, Alexander Pushkin. Enjoy!

Winter Journey
Alexander Pushkin

Now the moon through fog that shivers
Makes its way across the night,
Soaking melancholy meadows
In a melancholy light.

Down the road through dismal winter,
My quick carriage carries on
Where the sleigh-bell’s tuneless tinkle
Is a numbing monotone.

Notes familiar in the music
Of the coachman’s winding song
Go from debonair carousal
To lamenting lovers’ wrong.

Neither hut nor glowing window….
Snow and hinterland…My eye
Merely marks the ciphered mileposts
Coming close and going by.

Glum and dreary- but tomorrow,
Nina dearest, I return
To your hearth and face, forgoing
All my thought to gaze and yearn.

Though the clock’s unhurried finger
Strike its circle out anew
Sending home the tardy stranger,
Midnight shall not part us two.

But for now the road is dreary.
Sleep has hushed the coachman’s tune.
Tedious, too, the tuneless sleigh-bell.
Fog is masking out the moon.