| Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921. | | | | “With My Fancy I Grasped” | By Konstantin Balmont (b. 1867)
(Trans. Avrahm Yarmolinsky and Cecil Cowdrey) |
| | | WITH my fancy I grasped at the vague shadows straying, | |
| At the vague shadows straying where the daylight had fled; | |
| I ascended a tower, and the stairway was swaying, | |
| And the stairway was swaying underneath my light tread. | |
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| And the higher I climbed, ever clearer were rounded, | 5 |
| Ever clearer were rounded dreaming hilltops aglow; | |
| And from Heaven to Earth twilight voices resounded, | |
| Twilight voices resounded from above and below. | |
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| And the higher I rose, strange horizons defining, | |
| Strange horizons defining, did the summits appear; | 10 |
| And my eyes as I looked were caressed by their shining, | |
| Were caressed by their shining, their farewell, sad and clear. | |
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| Now the night had appeared; Earth in darkness lay dreaming, | |
| Earth in darkness lay dreaming, like a slumbering star, | |
| While the smoldering sun, his dim embers still gleaming, | 15 |
| His dim embers still gleaming, shone for me from afar. | |
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| I had learned to ensnare the vague shadows far straying, | |
| The vague shadows far straying, where the daylight had fled; | |
| Ever higher I rose, and the stairway was swaying, | |
| And the stairway was swaying underneath my light tread. | 20 | | | |
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