The Dream
By Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov;
translated from Russian by Vladimir Nabokov
In noon's heat, in a dale of
Dagestan
With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
The deep wound still smoked on; my blood
Kept trickling drop by drop away.
On the dale's sand alone I lay.
The cliffs
Crowded around in ledges steep,
And the sun scorched their tawny tops
And scorched me -- but I slept death's sleep.
And in a dream I saw an evening
feast
That in my native land with bright lights shone;
Among young women crowned with flowers,
A merry talk concerning me went on.
But in the merry talk not
joining,
One of them sat there lost in thought,
And in a melancholy dream
Her young soul was immersed --
God knows by what.
And of a dale in Dagestan she
dreamt;
In that dale lay the corpse of one she knew;
Within his breast a smoking wound showed black,
And blood ran in a stream that colder grew.
