| Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921. | | | | Sonnet XV | | By Maximilian Voloshin (b. 1877) |
| | (From the Sonnet-cycle “Lunaria”)
PURE pearl of silence brooding on the sky, | |
| Presider o’er conception, lamp of dreams, | |
| Altar of nightly spells, of crystal gleams, | |
| Queen of the waters where thou lov’st to lie, | |
| With what desire, where the long waves sigh, | 5 |
| Through my dark crucifixions, toward thy beams, | |
| Toward Dian, toward fierce Hecate, there streams | |
| The vision yet unlived that shall not die. | |
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| How strange thy diamond delirium shines | |
| In thy fair hollows, in thy joyless lines, | 10 |
| And in the flashing mica of thy seas. | |
| In listless ether thou art horror’s face, | |
| Thou, longing’s cry, whom icy gaolers freeze, | |
| Thou, dead world’s avid corpse, cast out on space. | | | | |
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