Night and day a kind voice soothing my ears With the life force snoozing in my breast IвЂ™ve stopped expecting anything from life, Stilly night, wilderness listening to God, This poem is recited from memory by Mikhail Gorbachev at the conclusion of Werner HerzogвЂ™s stupendous film Meeting Gorbachev.Д®lisabeth van der Meer, host of the site A Russian Affair, has sent me a translation of LermontovвЂ™s poem (which I regard as a better than the translation I posted) by Michael Longley: The vault is overwhelmed with solemn wonderД«y night and day, my hearing would be soothed The flinty path is sparkling in the mist The whale swims the ocean, shouldering aside the waves. A man shoulders his way through a crowd, brushing aside others in his way. I could not get into Spenser and did not appreciate The Faerie Queene. I took an English course in college (in which I somehow got the grade of B) - Literature of Transition: Classic to Romantic - in which we read The Faerie Queene. It was an image, which, figuratively speaking (according to my former professor Aileen WardвЂ™s magnificent biography), overpowered the future poet John Keats in his late teens when he began to read avidly. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene: Book II, Canto xii Mighty Monoceroses, with immeasured tayles. Great whirlpooles, which all fishes make to flee,Д«right Scolopendraes, armвЂ™d with siluer scales, Spring-headed Hydraes, and SEA-SHOULDRING WHALES,

Or shame, that euer should so fowle defects Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see, Of huge Sea monsters, such as liuing sence dismayd. Vnweeting, what such horrour straunge did reare.Д®ftsoones they saw an hideous hoast arrayd,

That all the three thereat woxe much afrayd, His whirling charet, for exceeding feare:ДЇor not one puffe of wind there did appeare, Or wrathfull Neptune did them driue before The waues come rolling, and the billowes rore The surging waters like a mountaine rise,ДЄnd the great sea puft vp with proud disdaine,ДЄs threatning to deuoure all, that his powre despise. Suddeine they see from midst of all the Maine, Whiles the dred daunger does behind remaine. That thвЂ™vtmost sandy breach they shortly fetch, His brawnie armes, and all his body straine, But thвЂ™heedfull Boateman strongly forth did stretch

Carpe diem west bend