"In thy commandment, Lord, I read
My neighbours' goods I must not covet,
But ask me not to rise above it
When tender hopes for licence plead:
I do not wish to harm my fellow,
I never grudge him house or folk:
Nor will his cattle e'er provoke
My envy—though in hordes they bellow:
His wife or ox I never seek,
Of asses I am unobservant:
But if his youthfullest maid-servant
Is pretty! Lord, there I am weak."
He was not given to brooding over disappointment, nor was there any self-centredness about him. Only once, on his twenty-eighth birthday, does he show himself obsessed with the problems of existence:
"Casual present, gift so aimless,
Life, why art thou given to me?
As by secret judgment nameless,
Why is death-doom passed on thee?
Who with hostile power inspired
Called me out of nothingness,
My poor heart with passion fired,
Doubt upon my mind did press?
Aimless is my whole existence,
Vague my mind, emotions thin.
With monotonous persistence
Life out-tires me with its din."
He was, par excellence, the singer of this world, reflecting it with a photographic exactness. Gogol called it reality turned into a pearl of creation, which is about the best and most concise definition we could require.
As a result of this Byronic obsession Pushkin was sent to Odessa to join the staff of the Governor. But the atmosphere of rectitude and cold officialdom bored him: trying his best was no good here: he was sent into the depths of the country to do easy and interesting reconnaissance work, to investigate the causes and results of the locust plague. The following is his official report:—
"The locust was flitting and flitting:
And sitting
And sitting sat, ravage committing,
At last the place quitting."
About this time he wrote to a friend a letter which was intercepted. It ran as follows:—
"I am reading the Bible. The Holy Ghost sometimes soothes me, but I prefer Goethe and Shakespeare. There is an Englishman here, a clever atheist, who overturns the theory of immortality—I am having lessons from him...."