You're not alone. You haven't died,
while you still,beggar-woman at your side,
take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,
the gloom, the cold,the whirlwinds of snow.
In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty
live comforted and at rest -
your days and nights are blest,
your sweet-voiced labour without sin.
Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,
whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,
and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,
who begs handouts from a ghost.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam.)
His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(1937)
translated by Andrew Davis
Tag: gloom
The Last Night by Clark Ashton Smith
I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height,
A mountain’s utmost eminence of snow.
Beholding ashen plains outflung below
To a far sea-horizon, dim and white.
Beneath the spectral sun’s expiring light
The world lay shrouded in a deathly glow;
Its last fear-laden voice, a wind, came low;
The distant sea lay hushed, as with affright.
I watched, until the pale and flickering sun,
In agony and fierce despair, flamed high,
And shadow-slain, went out upon the gloom.
Then Night, that war of gulf-born Titans won,
Impended for a breath on wings of doom.
And through the air fell like a falling sky.
by Clark Ashton Smith
