Who'll say: Thou art none of ours!

Thou wilt ask: Where are my parents?

But for thee no kin is found.

Hapless one! with heart filled with sorrow,

Lonely amid thy mates,

Thy spirit sullen to the end

Thou shalt behold the fondling mothers.

A lonely wanderer everywhere,

Cursing thy fate at all times,

Thou the bitter reproach shalt hear ...

Forgive me, oh, forgive me then!

Asleep! let me then, O hapless one,

To my bosom press thee once for all;

A law unjust and terrible

Thee and me to sorrow dooms.

While the years have not yet chased

The guiltless joy of thy days,

Sleep, my darling; let no bitter griefs

Mar thy childhood's quiet life!"

But lo, behind the woods, near by,

The moon brings a hut to light.

Forlorn, pale, trembling

To the doors she came nigh;

She stooped, and gently laid down

The babe on the strange threshold.

In terror away she turned her eyes

And disappeared in the darkness of the night.

12. This also is a narrative poem; but it tells something more than a story. A new element is here added. For it not only gratifies our curiosity about the mother and the babe, but it also moves us. And it moves not our low passion, but it stirs our high emotion. Not our anger is here roused, as against the owner of the black shawl, but our pity is stirred for the innocent babe; and even the mother, though guilty enough, stirs our hearts. Here, too, as in the "Black Shawl," the art of the narrator is perfect. The few touches of description are given only in so far as they vivify the scene and furnish a fit background for the mother and child. But the theme is already of a higher order, and in rank I therefore place the "Outcast" one plane above the "Black Shawl."

13. The two poems I have just read you are essentially ballads; they deal indeed with emotion, but only incidentally. Their chief purpose is the telling of the story. I shall now read you some specimens of a higher order of poetry, - of that which reflects the pure emotion which the soul feels when beholding beauty in Nature. I consider such poetry as on a higher plane, because this emotion is at bottom a reverence before the powers of Nature, hence a worship of God. It is at bottom a confession of the soul of its humility before its Creator. It is the constant presence of this emotion which gives permanent value to the otherwise tame and commonplace writings of Wordsworth. Wordsworth seldom climbs the height he attains in those nine lines, the first of which are: - "My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky."

But here Pushkin is always on the heights. And the first I will read you shall be one in which the mere sense of Nature's beauty finds vent in expression without any conscious ethical purpose. It is an address to the last cloud.

THE CLOUD.

O last cloud of the scattered storm,

Alone thou sailest along the azure clear;

Alone thou bringest the darkness of shadow;