20. Hitherto we have followed Pushkin only through his unconscious song; only through that song of which his soul was so full as to find an outlet, as it were, without any deliberate effort on his part. But not even unto the bard is it given to remain in this childlike health. For Nature ever works in circles. Starting from health, the soul indeed in the end arrives at health, but only through the road of disease. And a good portion of the conscious period in the life of the soul is taken up by doubt, by despair, by disease. Hence when the singer begins to reflect, to philosophize, his song is no longer that of health. This is the reason why Byron and Shelley have borne so little fruit. Their wail is the cry not of a mood, but of their whole being; it is not the cry of health temporarily deranged, but the cry of disease. With the healthy Burns, on the other hand, his poem, “Man was made to Mourn,” reflects only a stage which all growing souls must pass. So Pushkin, too, in his growth, at last arrives at a period when he writes the following lines, not the less beautiful for being the offspring of disease, as all lamentation must needs be:—
“Whether I roam along the noisy streets,
Whether I enter the peopled temple,
Or whether I sit by thoughtless youth,
My thoughts haunt 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.
“And if I gaze upon the lonely oak,
I think: The patriarch of the woods
Will survive my passing age
As he survived my father's age.
“And if a tender babe I fondle,
Already I mutter, Fare thee well!
I yield my place to thee;
For me 'tis time to decay, to bloom for thee.