Amid the blue haze of the ocean
A sail is passing, white and frail.
What do you seek in a far country?
What have you left at home, lone sail?

The billows play, the breezes whistle,
And rhythmically creaks the mast.
Alas, you seek no happy future,
Nor do you flee a happy past.

Below the mirrored azure brightens,
Above the golden rays increase —
But you, wild rover, pray for tempests,
As if in tempests there was peace!

† Mikhail Lermontov {1814 • 1841}
† Transl. By Vladimir Nabokov {1899 • 1977}