The Demon / Демон. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Olgin

The Demon

An Eastern Legend

Part I

I

His way above the sinful earth

The melancholy Demon winged

And memories of happier days

About his exiled spirit thronged;

Of days when in the halls of light

He shone among the angels bright;

When comets in their headlong flight

Would joy to pay respect to him

As, chaste among the cherubim,

Among th' eternal nebulae

With eager mind and quick surmise

He'd trace their caravanserai

Through the far spaces of the skies;

When he had known both faith and love,

The happy firstling of creation!

When neither doubt nor dark damnation

Had whelmed him with the bitterness

Of fruitless exile year by year,

And when so much, so much… but this

Was more than memory could bear.

II

Outcast long since, he wandered lone,

Having no place to call his own,

Through the dull desert of the world

While age on age about him swirled,

Minute on minute – all the same.

Prince of this world – which he held cheap —

He scattered tares among the wheat…

A joyless task without remission,

Void of excitement, opposition —

Evil itself to him seemed tame.

III

And so – exiled from Paradise —

He soared above the peaks of ice

And saw the everlasting snows

Of Kazbek and the Caucasus,

And, serpentine, the winding deeps

Of that black, dragon-haunted pass

The Daryal gorge; then the wild leaps

Of Terek like a lion bounding

With mane of tangled spray that blows

Behind him, and a great roar sounding

Through all the hills, where beast and bird

On mountain scree and azure steeps

The river's mighty voice had heard;

And, as he flew, the golden clouds

Streaked from the South in tattered shrouds…

Companions on his Northbound course;

And the great cliffs came crowding in

And brooded darkly over him

Exuding some compelling force

Of somnolence above the stream…

And on the cliff-tops castles reared

Their towered heads and baleful stared

Out through the mists – wardens who wait

Colossal at the mighty gate

Of Caucasus – and all about

God's world lay wonderful and wild…

But the proud Spirit looked with doubt

And cool contempt on God's creation,

His brow unruffled and serene

Admitting no participation.

IV

Before him now another scene

In vivid beauty blooms.