Insomnia
The clock's invariable strokes,
Night's wearisome narration!
A language strange alike to all
And clear to everyone like Conscience.
Of us, who has ungrieving harked
Midst universal silence
The muffled plaints of Time,
The oracular, the parting voice?
We fancy thus: the orphaned world
Has fallen to unswerving Doom,
And we, in strife, by all of Nature
Have been abandoned to ourselves:
Our life is standing there before us
Ghost-like, upon the edge of Earth,
And paling into gloomy distance
With our companions and our age,
And a new and youthful breed
Has risen 'neath the sun,
And we, friends, and our times
Have long been covered in oblivion.
But seldom, in a somber rite
At midnight's hour
The funerary voice of iron
Chances to weep for us.
--Fyodor Tyutchev
[Via Alex(ei) at The Russian Dilettante's Weblog]
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