"I love to see the face of Beauty"
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Instead of a passage from a nineteenth century Russian novel or story, today’s blog is four stanzas from a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev, a lesser known contemporary of Aleksandr Pushkin. Although his body of works included philosophical and nature poems, he is better known for creating the best love poems in the Russian language. Tyutchev was enamored by changes in nature and the wildness of its elements as expressed in his poem “Tears.”
“TEARS”
“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 if 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!….”