The Prophet

Translated from the Russian of Pushkin by Maurice Baring

With fainting soul athirst for Grace,

I wandered in a desert place,

And at the crossing of the ways

I saw the sixfold Seraph blaze;

He touched mine eyes with fingers light

As sleep that cometh in the night:

And like a frighted eagle’s eyes,

They opened wide with prophecies.

He touched mine ears, and they were drowned

With tumult and a roaring sound:

I heard convulsion in the sky,

And flights of angel hosts on high,

And beasts that move beneath the sea,

And the sap creeping in the tree.

And bending to my mouth he wrung

From out of it my sinful tongue,

And all deceit and idle rust,

And ’twixt my lips a-perishing

A subtle serpent’s forked sting

With Right hand wet with blood he thrust.

And with his sword my breast he cleft,

My quaking heart thereout he reft,

And in the yawning of my breast

A coal of living fire he pressed.

Then in the desert I lay dead,

And God called unto me and said:

“Arise, and let My voice be heard,

Charged with My Will go forth and span

The land and sea, and let My Word

Lay waste with fire the heart of man.”

(Published in Life and Letters, 1931, vol. VII, no. 39.)