"My wishes I have survived,
My ambition I have outgrown!
Left only is my smart,
The fruit of emptiness of heart.
"Under the storm of cruel Fate
Faded has my blooming crown!
Sad I live and lonely,
And wait: Is nigh my end?"
But in the second it already becomes—
"Whether I roam along the noisy streets
Whether I enter the peopled temple,
Whether I sit by thoughtless youth,
Haunt my thoughts me everywhere.
"I say, Swiftly go the years by:
However great our number now,
Must all descend the eternal vaults,—
Already struck has some one's hour.
. . . . . . . . . .
"Every year thus, every day
With death my thought I join
Of coming death the day
I seek among them to divine."
19. Pushkin died young; that he would have conquered his demon in time there is every reason to believe, though the fact that he had not yet conquered him at the age of thirty-eight must show the tremendous force of bad blood, and still worse circumstance, which combined made the demon of Pushkin. But already he shows signs of having seen the promised land.
In the three poems, "Resurrection," "The Birdlet" (iv. 133), and "Consolation," the first shows that he conquered his regret-disease; the second, that he already found in Love some consolation for sorrow. And the third shows that he already felt his way at least to some peace, even though it be not yet faith in the future, but only hope. For hope is not yet knowledge; it only trusts that the future will be good. Faith knows that the future must be good, because it is in the hands of God, the Good.
In the first it is—
"Thus my failings vanish too
From my wearied soul
And again within it visions rise
Of my early purer days."
In the second,—
"And now I too have consolation:
Wherefore murmur against my God
When at least to one living being
I could of freedom make a gift?"