Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse/Water
From droplets of dew that aquiver are throwing
The lustre of jewels around,
To the pallor of spaces, where, distantly flowing,
The wave of the ocean its foam-wreath is strowing
O'er seas that no plummet can sound,
Thou art everywhere, ever, life changelessly glowing,
Now emerald-tinted, now azurely showing,
Now in ruby and amber the waters abound,
In orange, white, green, and in dusky-blue splendour,
And in such as the deserts alone can engender,
In the swinging and singing of tides without bound,
Of tints only seen by the choicest of gazes,
As they tremble and sparkle and dazzle, their mazes
No words can be culled to reflect:
Though the word has its tints with unquenchable gleaming,
Though the word that is comely with bloom ever teeming,
A spring-tide of hues has bedecked.
The water has guises of infinite seeming
In zones that are boundlessly deep;
Its multiple billows are cradled in dreaming,
The spirit with muteness and tune of its streaming
It answers and lulls into sleep.
Rich of old have they been, and rich still are the spaces
Where deserts stretch onward in azure-green traces,
And islands have birth in their shoals.
And Ocean, still Ocean, unfettered it ranges,
But man ever sees how it changes and changes,
And billowy visions unrolls.
Wherever I wander,
Or hither, or yonder,
I have harkened to lays of the storm,
And I know how diversely I ponder.
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Upon Water so endlessly fair.
- ↑ The selections marked with an asterisk have already appeared in "Modern Russian Poetry" by the same author.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
