Russian Poetry
POEMS IN PROSE
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Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning
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The Rose
The last days of August…. Autumn had already come.
The sun had set. A sudden, violent rain, without thunder and without lightning, had just swooped down upon our broad plain.
The garden in front of the house burned and smoked, all flooded with the heat of sunset and the deluge of rain.
She was sitting at a table in the drawing-room and staring with stubborn thoughtfulness into the garden, through the half-open door.
I knew what was going on then in her soul. I knew that after a brief though anguished conflict, she would that same instant yield to the feeling which she could no longer control.
Suddenly she rose, walked out briskly into the garden and disappeared.
One hour struck … then another; she did not return.
Then I rose, and emerging from the house, I bent my steps to the alley down which—I had no doubt as to that—she had gone.
Everything had grown dark round about; night had already descended. But on the damp sand of the path, gleaming scarlet amid the encircling gloom, a rounded object was visible.
I bent down. It was a young, barely-budded rose. Two hours before I had seen that same rose on her breast.
I carefully picked up the flower which had fallen in the mire, and returning to the drawing-room, I laid it on the table, in front of her arm-chair.
And now, at last, she returned, and traversing the whole length of the room with her light footsteps, she seated herself at the table.
Her face had grown pale and animated; swiftly, with merry confusion, her lowered eyes, which seemed to have grown smaller, darted about in all directions.
She caught sight of the rose, seized it, glanced at its crumpled petals, glanced at me—and her eyes, coming to a sudden halt, glittered with tears.
“What are you weeping about?” I asked.
“Why, here, about this rose. Look what has happened to it.”
At this point I took it into my head to display profundity of thought.
“Your tears will wash away the mire,” I said with a significant expression.
“Tears do not wash, tears scorch,” she replied, and, turning toward the fireplace, she tossed the flower into the expiring flame.
“The fire will scorch it still better than tears,” she exclaimed, not without audacity,—and her beautiful eyes, still sparkling with tears, laughed boldly and happily.
I understood that she had been scorched also.
April, 1878.
Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood
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Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning
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