October 19

The forest sheds its crimson dress,
Silvering with frost the withered field,
The day peeks out as if unwilling,
Then hides beyond the ring of hills.
Blaze, fireplace, in my deserted cell;
And you, wine, friend of autumn’s chill,
Pour into my breast a soothing hangover,
A momentary oblivion of bitter torment.
I am sad: no friend is here with me,
With whom I might drink away a long separation,
To whom I might press a heartfelt hand
And wish many merry years.
I drink alone; in vain imagination
Calls comrades round about me;
No familiar approach is heard,
And my soul awaits no dear one.
I drink alone, and on the banks of the Neva
My friends today are calling my name...
But how many of you are feasting there?
Whom among you do you still not count?
Who has betrayed the charming custom?
Whom has the cold world lured away?
Whose voice is silent at the brotherly roll call?
Who did not come? Who is absent among you?
He did not come, our curly-haired singer,
With fire in his eyes, with sweet-voiced guitar:
Beneath the myrtles of beautiful Italy
He sleeps quietly, and a friendly chisel
Has not inscribed above the Russian grave
A few words in the native tongue,
So that one day a melancholy greeting
Might be found by a son of the north wandering in a foreign land.
Do you sit in the circle of your friends,
Restless lover of alien skies?
Or do you again traverse the burning tropics
And the eternal ice of northern seas?
A happy voyage! From the Lyceum threshold
You stepped onto a ship in jest,
And since that day your road has been the seas,
O favorite child of waves and storms!
In your wandering fate you preserved
The original ways of those прекрасных years:
Lyceum noise, Lyceum amusements
Were dreamed by you amid the stormy waves;
From beyond the sea you stretched a hand to us,
You alone bore us in your youthful soul
And repeated: “For a long separation
Secret fate may, perhaps, have doomed us!”
My friends, our union is beautiful!
Like the soul, it is indivisible and eternal—
Unshakable, free, and carefree,
It grew together beneath the shade of friendly muses.
Wherever fate may cast us,
And wherever happiness may lead,
We are still the same: the whole world is foreign to us;
Our fatherland is Tsarskoye Selo.
Driven from edge to edge by storm,
Entangled in the nets of harsh fate,
I, weary, with a tremble to the bosom of new friendship,
Bent my caressing head...
With my sorrowful and rebellious plea,
With the trusting hope of my first years,
I gave my tender soul to other friends;
But bitter was their unbrotherly greeting.
And now here, in this forgotten wilderness,
In the abode of lonely blizzards and cold,
A sweet comfort was being prepared for me:
Here I embraced three of you, friends of my soul.
The disgraced poet’s house,
O my Pushchin, you were the first to visit;
You sweetened the sorrowful day of exile,
You turned it into the Lyceum day.
You, Gorchakov, fortunate from your earliest days,
Praise to you—the cold gleam of fortune
Did not alter your free soul:
You are still the same for honor and for friends.
Fate strictly appointed us different roads;
Stepping into life, we quickly parted:
But by chance on a country road
We met and embraced like brothers.
When fate’s wrath overtook me,
An outcast to all, like a homeless orphan,
Under the storm I bowed my weary head
And waited for you, prophet of the Permessian maids,
And you came, inspired son of indolence,
O my Delvig: your voice awakened
The ardor of heart so long asleep,
And boldly I blessed my fate.
From childhood the spirit of song burned in us,
And we knew a wondrous agitation;
From childhood two muses flew to us,
And sweet was our lot beneath their caress:
But I already loved applause,
While you, proud one, sang for the muses and the soul;
I spent my gift carelessly like life itself,
You nurtured your genius in silence.
The service of the muses does not tolerate fuss;
Beauty must be majestic:
But youth gives us sly advice,
And noisy dreams delight us...
We come to our senses—but too late! and sadly
We look back, seeing no trace there.
Tell me, Wilhelm, was it not the same with us,
My own brother in muse, in destiny?
It is time, it is time! The world
Is not worth our soul’s torments; let us leave delusions!
Let us hide life beneath the shade of solitude!
I await you, my belated friend—
Come; with the fire of your magical tale
Revive the legends of the heart;
Let us speak of the stormy days of the Caucasus,
Of Schiller, of glory, of love.
It is time for me as well... feast on, O friends!
I foresee a joyful meeting;
Remember then the poet’s prophecy:
A year will pass, and I shall be with you again,
The covenant of my dreams will be fulfilled;
A year will pass, and I shall appear to you!
O how many tears and how many exclamations,
And how many cups raised to heaven!
And the first one fuller, friends, fuller!
And drain it to the bottom in honor of our union!
Bless, rejoicing muse,
Bless us: long live the Lyceum!
To the mentors who guarded our youth,
To all in honor, the dead and the living,
Lifting a grateful cup to our lips,
Remembering no evil, let us repay good with good.
Fuller, fuller! and with hearts ablaze,
Again drain it to the bottom, to the last drop!
But to whom? O friends, guess...
Hurrah, our tsar! yes! let us drink to the tsar.
He is a man! He is ruled by the moment.
He is a slave to rumor, doubts, and passions;
Let us forgive him his unjust persecution:
He took Paris, he founded the Lyceum.
So feast while we are still here!
Alas, our circle grows thinner hour by hour;
One sleeps in the grave, another, far away, grows orphaned;
Fate watches, we wither; the days run by;
Unseen, bowing and growing cold,
We draw near our beginning...
To which of us in old age will it fall
To celebrate the Lyceum day alone?
Unhappy friend! amid new generations
A tedious guest, superfluous and alien,
He will remember us and the days of union,
Closing his eyes with a trembling hand...
So let him then spend this day,
Though sadly, yet with comfort, over a cup,
As I now, your disgraced recluse,
Have spent it without grief and care.[\/spoiler]