Владимир Набоков - Стихотворения

Give me a lofty palace
with an arbour all around
where amber grapes would ripen
and the broad shade fleck the ground.
Let an ever-purling fountain
among marble pillars play
and lull me to sleep and wake me
in a halo of heavenly visions
and the cool dust of its spray.

As a lily that looks at itself in a stream
so my very first song was your mirrored dream.
But whose was the triumph? Who gave and who took?
Was it brook from blossom or blossom from brook?

Your childish soul could so easily guess
the thoughts I was inwardly moved to express.
Though I live without you by a dreary decree,
we are one — for nothing can part you and me.

The grass on your grave in a distant clime
is here in my heart growing greener with time.
When I happen to glance at the stars, then I know
that together like gods we had looked at their glow.

Love has words of its own, these words cannot die.
Our singular case special judges will try:
in the crowd they will notice us right from the start —
for as one we will come — we whom nothing can part.

When life is torture, when hope is a traitor,
when in the battle my soul must surrender,
then daily, nightly I lower my eyelids,
and all is revealed in a strange flash of splendor.

Like nights in autumn, life's darkness seems denser
between the distant and thunderless flashes.
Alone the starlight is endlessly friendly —
the stars that sparkle through golden bright lashes.

And all this lambent abyss is so limpid,
so close is the sky to my spirit's desire,
that, straight out of time into timelessness peering,
your throne I discern, empyrean fire.

And there the altar of all creation
stands still and smokes in a glory of roses.
Eternity dreams of itself, as the smoke-wreaths
vibrate with the forces and forms it composes.

And all that courses down cosmic channels,
and every ray of the mind or of matter
is but your reflection, empyrean fire,
dreams, only dreams that flit by and scatter.

And in that wind of sidereal fancies
I float like vapor, now dimmer, now brighter —
and thanks to my vision, and thanks to oblivion,
with ease I breathe, and life's burden is lighter.

When prying idly into Nature
I am paticularly fond
of watching the arrow of a swallow
over the sunset of a pond.

See — there it goes, and skims, and glances:
the alien element, I fear,
roused from its glassy sleep might capture
black lightning quivering so near.

There — once again that fearless shadow
over a frowning ripple ran.
Have we not here the living image
of active poetry in man —

of something leading me, banned mortal,
to venture where I dare not stop —
striving to scoop from a forbidden
mysterious element one drop?

Down from her head the earth has rolled
the low sun like a redhot ball.
Down went the evening's peaceful blaze
and seawaves have absorbed it all.

Heavy and near the sky had seemed.
But now the stars are rising high,
they glow and with their humid heads
push up the ceiling of the sky.

The river of the air between
heaven and earth now fuller flows.
The breast is ridded of the heat
and breaths in freedom and repose.

And now there goes through Nature's veins
a liquid shiver, swift and sweet,
as though the waters of a spring
had come to touch her burning feet.

Friends, with my eyes I love caressing
the purple of a flashing wine,
nor do I scorn the fragrant ruby
of clustered fruit that leaves entwine.

I love to look around when Nature
seems as it were immersed in May;
when bathed in redolence she slumbers
and smiles throughout her dreamy day.

I love to see the face of Beauty
flushed with the air of Spring that seeks
softly to toy with silky ringlets
or deepen dimples on her cheeks.

But all voluptuous enchantments,
lush grapes, rich roses — what are you
compared to tears, that sacred fountain,
that paradisal morning dew!

Therein divinest beams are mirrored,
and in those burning drops they break,
and breaking — what resplendent rainbows
upon Life's thunderclouds they make!

As soon as mortal eyes thou touchest,
with wings, Angel of Tears, the world
dissolves in mist, and lo! a skyful
of Seraph faces is unfurled.

Soft sand comes up to our horses' shanks
as we ride in the darkening day
and the shadows of pines have closed their ranks:
all is shadow along our way.

In denser masses the black trees rise.
what a comfortless neighborhood!
Grim night like a beast with a hundred eyes
peers out of the underwood.

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blended by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard…
take in their song and speak no word.

Love at the closing of our days
is apprehensive and very tender.
Glow brighter, brighter, farewell rays
of one last love in its evening splendor.

Blue shade takes half the world away:
through western clouds alone some light is slanted.
О tarry, О tarry, declining day,
enchantment, let me stay enchanted.

The blood runs thinner, yet the heart
remains as ever deep and tender.
О last belated love, thou art
a blend of joy and of hopeless surrender.