A Feast in Time of Plague [excerpt] by Alexander Pushkin

There is joy in battle,

poised on a chasm’s edge,

and in black ocean’s rage –

that whirl of darkening wind and wave –

in an Arabian sandstorm,

and in a breath of plague.

 

Within each breath of death

lives joy, lives secret joy

for mortal hearts, a pledge,

perhaps, of immortality,

and blessed is he who, storm-tossed,

can see and seize this joy.

 

by Александр Сергеевич Пушкин (Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)

a.k.a. Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

(1830)

translated by Robert Chandler

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Fun Facts: This is one of Pushkin’s ‘Little Tragedies’, an adaption of part of a play by a Scottish writer, John Wilson. The song this excerpt is from is of Pushkin’s own original composition though.

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