| Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921. | | | | From “The Daemon,” Part I, xv | | By Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) |
| | | ON the sightless seas of ether, | |
| Rudderless, without a sail, | |
| Choirs of stars uplift their voices, | |
| Where the mist-waves rise and fail. | |
| |
| Through the hemless fields of heaven | 5 |
| Wander wide and tracelessly | |
| Clouds, unshepherded, unnumbered, | |
| Pale, ephemeral and free. | |
| |
| Hour of parting, hour of meeting, | |
| Neither gladden them, nor fret; | 10 |
| Theirs no yearning toward the future, | |
| Theirs no haunting of regret. | |
| |
| On the grim day of disaster | |
| These remember, worlds away: | |
| Be beyond earth’s reach as these are, | 15 |
| And indifferent as they. | | | | |
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