Untitled - eClassical

Vasily Polenov: To the Sea
Farewell to you, unharnessed Ocean!
No longer will you roll at me
Your azure swells in endless motion
Or gleam in tranquil majesty.
A comrade’s broken words on leaving,
His hail of parting at the door:
Your chant of luring, chant of grieving
Will murmur in my ears no more.
Oh, homeland of my spirit’s choosing!
How often on your banks at large
I wandered mute and dimly musing,
Fraught with a sacred, troubling charge!
How I would love your deep resounding,
The primal chasm’s muffled voice,
How in your vesper calm rejoice,
And in your sudden, reckless bounding!
The fisher’s lowly canvas slips,
By your capricious favour sheltered,
Undaunted down your breakers’ lips:
Yet by your titan romps have weltered
And foundered droves of masted ships.
Alas, Fate thwarted me from weighing
My anchor off the cloddish shore,
Exultantly your realm surveying,
And by your drifting ridges laying
My poet’s course for evermore.
You waited, called… I was in irons,
And vainly did my soul rebel,
Becalmed in those uncouth environs
By passion’s overpowering spell.
(English version: Babette Deutsch)
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