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 Visit
I was sitting at the open window … in the morning, early in the morning, on the first of May.
The flush of dawn had not yet begun; but the dark, warm night was already paling, already growing chill.
No fog had risen, no breeze was straying, everything was of one hue and silent … but one could scent the approach of the awakening, and in the rarefied air the scent of the dew’s harsh dampness was abroad.
Suddenly, into my chamber, through the open window, flew a large bird, lightly tinkling and rustling.
I started, looked more intently…. It was not a bird: it was a tiny, winged woman, clad in a long, close-fitting robe which billowed out at the bottom.
She was all grey, the hue of mother-of-pearl; only the inner side of her wings glowed with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls of her small, round head,—and two peacock feathers quivered amusingly, like the feelers of a butterfly, above the fair, rounded little forehead.
She floated past a couple of times close to the ceiling: her tiny face was laughing; laughing also were her huge, black, luminous eyes. The merry playfulness of her capricious flight shivered their diamond rays.
She held in her hand a long frond of a steppe flower—”Imperial sceptre”[72] the Russian folk call it; and it does, indeed, resemble a sceptre.
As she flew rapidly above me she touched my head with that flower.
I darted toward her…. But she had already fluttered through the window, and away she flew headlong….
In the garden, in the wilderness of the lilac-bushes, a turtle-dove greeted her with its first cooing; and at the spot where she had vanished the milky-white sky flushed a soft crimson.
I recognised thee, goddess of fancy! Thou hast visited me by accident—thou hast flown in to young poets.
O poetry! O youth! O virginal beauty of woman! Only for an instant can ye gleam before me,—in the early morning of the early spring!
May, 1878.
[72] The pretty name for what we call mullein.—TRANSLATOR.
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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