From the Russian of Pushkin.
Close by a lake, begirt with forest,
To save his soul, a Monk intent,
In fasting, prayer and labours sorest
His days and nights, secluded, spent;
A grave already to receive him
He fashion’d, stooping, with his spade,
And speedy, speedy death to give him,
Was all that of the Saints he pray’d.
As once in summer’s time of beauty,
On bended knee, before his door,
To God he paid his fervent duty,
The woods grew more and more obscure:
Down o’er the lake a fog descended,
And slow the full moon, red as blood,
Midst threat’ning clouds up heaven wended—
Then gazed the Monk upon the flood.
He gaz’d, and, fear his mind surprising,
Himself no more the hermit knows:
He sees with foam the waters rising,
And then subsiding to repose,
And sudden, light as night-ghost wanders,
A female thence her form uprais’d,
Pale as the snow which winter squanders,
And on the bank herself she plac’d.
She gazes on the hermit hoary,
And combs her long hair, tress by tress;
The Monk he quakes, but on the glory
Looks wistful of her loveliness;
Now becks with hand that winsome creature,
And now she noddeth with her head,
Then sudden, like a fallen meteor,
She plunges in her watery bed.
No sleep that night the old man cheereth,
No prayer throughout next day he pray’d
Still, still, against his wish, appeareth
Before him that mysterious maid.
Darkness again the wood investeth,
The moon midst clouds is seen to sail,
And once more on the margin resteth
The maiden beautiful and pale.
With head she bow’d, with look she courted,
And kiss’d her hand repeatedly,
Splashed with the water, gaily sported,
And wept and laugh’d like infancy—
She names the monk, with tones heart-urging
Exclaims “O Monk, come, come to me!”{7}
Then sudden midst the waters merging
All, all is in tranquillity.
On the third night the hermit fated
Beside those shores of sorcery,
Sat and the damsel fair awaited,
And dark the woods began to be—
The beams of morn the night mists scatter,
No Monk is seen then, well a day!
And only, only in the water
The lasses view’d his beard of grey.