Let me once only weep in the assurance blest
  That I am not girt round with human scorn,
Let me but sleep once more upon thy gentle breast,
Forgetting in my childish, deeply-dreaming rest
  The loss and failure of my life forlorn!

NADSON.

CALL HIM NOT DEAD

Call him not dead,—­he lives! 
                                  Ah you forget
Though the pyre lies in ruin the fires upward sweep,
The string of the harp is broken but her chords still weep,
The rose is cut but it is blooming yet!

NADSON.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

ALEXANDER SERGJEWITSCH PUSHKIN was born at Moscow, May 26, 1799.  His first poetical influence came from his nurse who taught him Russian tales, legends and proverbs, and to whom, with loving recognition, he was grateful to the end of his life.  His grandmother and this nurse taught him to read and write.  In his seventh year he began the study of foreign languages; German, French,—­which was as his mother tongue to him,—­and mathematics, which he hated.  At nine the passion of reading possessed him and he devoured his father’s library, which included the French erotics, Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists.  His own first poetical work was indeed written in French.  In 1811 he was sent to the school then just opened, at Tzarskoe Selo near Petersburg.  Here, however, he learned little, the students being more interested in drinking bouts and platonic relations with barmaids and actresses; in spite of which the art of poetry was worshiped and Pushkin with others among his friends published a journal in manuscript that circulated their own contributions.  He was later graduated from the Alexandrovsky Lyceum, the highest and most splendid civil school of that time, and entered the department of Foreign Affairs.  Although he retained his entire sympathy with the poetic brotherhood, he now frequented the salons of the titled aristocracy and gave himself up to the vortex of luxurious society.  Because of his political satires and too free opposition to the government, he was sent away from Petersburg in 1820, and attached to the Governor of the South Russian Colonies.  Here he fell ill and went to the Caucas for recovery.  It was in the Crimea that he learned to know and wonder over Byron.  He remained three years in Kischinew,—­in the service chiefly of wine, women and cards.  In 1823 he went to Odessa as attache of the General Governor Count Woronzow, whom he pursued with biting epigram,—­until in 1824 the poet of “Russlan and Ludimilla” was removed from the service and banished to his mother’s estates by order of the Tsar Alexander I.