Fedor Tyutchev

You often watched him on the high life's level, --
The gaily-selfish or with gloomy sight,
Or full of thoughts, or scatted one and wild,
As poets are -- and you've scorned him forever!

-- Look at the crescent: like a slim white cloud,
In daily skies, he's almost lost his might,
But a night had come, and, God of holly light,
He, shines, the single, on the sleeping ground!               


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October, 2000