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Ivan Turgenev — poem “Stay!”

Russian Poetry

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Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev  – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning
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Stay!

Stay! As I now behold thee remain thou evermore in my memory!

From thy lips the last inspired sound hath burst forth—thine eyes do not gleam and flash, they are dusky, weighted with happiness, with the blissful consciousness of that beauty to which thou hast succeeded in giving expression,—of that beauty in quest of which thou stretchest forth, as it were, thy triumphant, thine exhausted hands!

What light, more delicate and pure than the sunlight, hath been diffused over all thy limbs, over the tiniest folds of thy garments?

What god, with his caressing inflatus, hath tossed back thy dishevelled curls?

His kiss burneth on thy brow, grown pale as marble!

Here it is—the open secret, the secret of poetry, of life, of love! Here it is, here it is—immortality! There is no other immortality—and no other is needed.—At this moment thou art deathless.

I will pass,—and again thou art a pinch of dust, a woman, a child…. But what is that to thee!—At this moment thou hast become loftier than all transitory, temporal things, thou hast stepped out of their sphere.—This thy moment will never end.

Stay! And let me be the sharer of thy immortality, drop into my soul the reflection of thine eternity!

November, 1879.

Pushkin's farewell to the sea. 1877 painted by Repin

Translated from the Russian by Isabel F. Hapgood


< < < Prayer
The Azure Realm > > >

Russian Literature – Russian Poetry – Children’s books – Ivan Turgenev  – Poems – Obsolete Russian Words and their meaning

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