Scenes from a Nightly Life

Lived a knight once, poor and simple,
Pale of face with glance austere,
Spare of speech, but with a spirit
Proud, intolerant of fear.

He had had a wondrous vision:
Ne'er could feeble human art
Gauge its deep, mysterious meaning,
It was graven on his heart.

And since then his soul had quivered
With an all-consuming fire,
Never more he looked on women,
Speech with them did not desire.

But he dropped his scarf thenceforward,
Wore a chaplet in its place,
And no more in sight of any
Raised the view from his face.

Filled with purest love and fervor,
Faith which his sweet dream did yield,
In his blood he traced the letters
A.M.D.* upon his shield.

When the Paladins proclaiming
Ladies' names as true love's sign,
Hurled themselves into the battle
On the plains of Palestine,

Lumen coeli, Sancta Rosa!
Shouted he with flaming glance,
And the fury of his menace
Checked the Muslim's advance.

Then returning to his castle
In far distant country side,
Silent, sad, bereft of reason,
In his solitude he died.

This poem is by Aleksandr Pushkin, called "Scenes from a Knightly Life" (1835). It was left unfinished, and was a revision of "The Covetous Knight," one of the series of plays "The Little Tragedies." I came across it in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which I am reading right now. For some reason I really liked the poem... so here it is.

*A.M.D. stands for Ave Mater Dei: Hail, Mother of God.

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Word of the Day: Ennui