Though we have parted, on my breast
your likeness as of old I wear.
It brings my spirit joy and rest,
pale phantom of a happier year.
To other passions now I thrill,
yet cannot leave this love of mine.
A cast-down idol – god-like still,
a shrine abandoned, yet a shrine.
by Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов (Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov)
(1837)
translated by Avril Pyman
Still he lay without moving, as if, after some difficult
task, he had folded his arms. Head quietly bowed, I stood
still for a long time, looking attentively into the dead man’s
eyes. These eyes were closed. Nevertheless, I could
see on that face I knew so well a look I had never
glimpsed there before. It was not inspiration’s flame,
nor did it seem like the blade of his wit. No, what I could
see there,
wrapped round his face, was thought, some deep, high
thought.
Vision, some vision, I thought must have come to home. And I
wanted to ask, ‘What is it? What do you see?’
by Василий Андреевич Жуковский (Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky)
(1837)
translated by Robert Chandler
Fun fact: Ivan Bunin, the Nobel Prize winning Russian emigre author, is related to him.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 