Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions. - Alexander Pushkin

Blest who was youthful in his youth;
blest who matured at the right time;
who gradually the chill of life
with years was able to withstand;
who never was addicted to strange dreams;
who did not shun the fahsinable rabble;
who was at twenty fop or blade,
and then at thirty, profitably married;
who rid himself at fifty
of private and of other debts;
who fame, money, and rank
in due course calmly gained;
about whom lifelong one kept saying:
N. N. is an excellent man.

But it is sad to think that to no purpose
youth was given us,
that we betrayed it every hour,
that it duped us;
that our best wishes,
that our fresh dreamings,
in quick succession have decayed
like leaves in putrid autumn.
It is unbearable to see before one
only of dinners a long series,
to look on life as on a rite,
and in the wake of the decorous crowd
to go, not sharing with it
either general views, or passions.

I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.

I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.

To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.

печаль моя светла..