Elegy

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin*


Of my mad years the vanished mirth and laughter
Affect me like a fume-filled morning after.
Not so past pain--like wine is it to me
That as the years go by gains potency.
Sad is the path before me: toil and sorrow
Lie on the restless seaways of the morrow.

And yet from thought of death, my friends, I shrink;
I want to live--to suffer and to think,
To taste of care and grief and tribulation,
Of rapture and of sweet exhilaration;
Be drunk with harmony; touch fancy's strings
And freely weep o'er its imaginings....
And love's last flash, its smile of farewell tender
My sad decline may yet less mournful render.


*Translated from Russian by Irina Zheleznova