Poem: The Moon
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature. His poem “The Moon” is a poignant, melancholic lyric he penned around 1816. It beautifully captures themes of lingering romantic sorrow and the agonizing persistence of memory.
Why do you slip the haze’s capture,
O silver moon, so all alone;
Why is your dim glow’s flicker thrown
Upon my pillows’ downy rapture?
For by your gloomy presence here
You waken all my doleful dreaming,
The pointless trials of love, the teeming
Desires I’d hoped would disappear
By dint of all my reason’s scheming.
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Away with you, fell recollection!
To sleep, unhappy ardour’s thought!
Oh, may I ne’er again be brought
To lie beneath your calm projection
As your mysterious, probing rays
Invade the room through heavy curtain
And palely, palely light a certain
Beloved’s form with shimmer’s plays.
What are you then, my lust’s diversion
Compared with secret joy’s delight,
The bliss of first love’s full immersion?
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Can such a flame again ignite?
And why, O minutes, did you skelter
So like a carriage, swiftly drawn?
And thin the shadows’ fading welter
Before the unexpected dawn?
And why, O moon, then did you vanish
And drown as radiance filled the sky?
Why must I bid my love goodbye?
Why must the morning’s starkness banish?
Translated by Rupert Moreton
Cover Image is generated by AI
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature.
