'Tis time, 'tis time! Let us once more be free!
The world's not worth this torturing resistance!
Beneath retirement's shade will glide existence—
Thee, my belated friend—I wait for thee!
Come! with the flame of an enchanted story
Tradition's lore shall wake, our hearts to move;
We'll talk of Caucasus, of war, of glory,
Of Schiller, and of genius, and of love.
'Tis time no less for me ... Friends, feast amain!
Behold, a joyful meeting is before us;
Think of the poet's prophecy; for o'er us
A year shall pass, and we shall meet again!
My vision's covenant shall have fulfilling;
A year—and I shall be with ye once more!
Oh, then, what shouts, what hand-grasps warm and thrilling!
What goblets skyward heaved with merry roar!
Unto our Union consecrated be
The first we drain—fill higher yet, and higher!
Bless it, O Muse, in strains of raptured fire!
Bless it! All hail, Lyceum! hail to thee!—
To those who led our youth with care and praises,
Living and dead! the next we grateful fill;
Let each, as to his lips the cup he raises,
The good remember, and forget the ill.
Feast, then, while we are here, while yet we may:
Hour after hour, alas! Time thins our numbers;
One pines afar, one in the coffin slumbers;
Days fly; Fate looks on us; we fade away;
Bending insensibly to earth, and chilling,
We near our starting-place with many a groan....
Whose lot will be in old age to be filling,
On this Lyceum-day, his cup alone?
Unhappy friend! Amid a stranger race,
Like guest intrusive, that superfluous lingers,
He'll think of us that day, with quivering fingers
Hiding the tears that wet his wrinkled face....
O, may he then at least, in mournful gladness,
Pass with his cup this day for ever dear,
As even I, in exile and in sadness,
Yet with a fleeting joy, have pass'd it here!
In the following lines, the poet has endeavoured to reproduce the impressions made upon his mind by the mountain scenery of the Caucasus; scenery which he had visited with such rapture, and to which his imagination returned with undiminished delight. It has been our aim to endeavour, in our translation, to give an echo, however feeble and imperfect, of the wild and airy freedom of the versification which distinguishes these spirited stanzas. The picture which they contain, rough, sketchy, and unfinished, as it may appear, bears every mark of being a faithful copy from nature—a study taken on the spot; and will therefore, we trust, be not unacceptable to our readers, as calculated to give an idea not only of the vigorous and rapid handling of the poet's pencil, but also of the wild and sublime region—the Switzerland of Russia—which he has here essayed to portray. Of the two furious and picturesque torrents which Púshkin has mentioned in this short poem, Térek is certainly too well known to our geographical readers to need any description of its course from the snow-covered peak of Dariál to the Caspian; and the bold comparison in the last stanza will doubtless be found, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, not deficient in a kind of fierce Æschylean energy, perfectly in character with the violent and thundering course of the torrent itself:—
Caucasus.
Beneath me the peaks of the Caucasus lie,
My gaze from the snow-bordered cliff I am bending;
From her sun-lighted eyry the Eagle ascending
Floats movelessly on in a line with mine eye.
I see the young torrent's first leap towards the ocean,
And the cliff-cradled lawine essay its first motion.
Beneath me the clouds in their silentness go,
The cataract through them in thunder down-dashing,
Far beneath them bare peaks in the sunny ray flashing,
Weak moss and dry shrubs I can mark yet below.
Dark thickets still lower—green meadows are blooming,
Where the throstle is singing, and reindeer are roaming.