It is not seemly to be famous...
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.
To give your all-this is creation,
And not-to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!
Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.
Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.
Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.
Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.
And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive-this only matters-
Alive and burning to the end.
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 329 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XABA XCDC XXXE EFEF DGBG XHXH XIEI |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 901 |
Words | 167 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Translation
Find a translation for this poem in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"It is not seemly to be famous..." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/4507/it-is-not-seemly-to-be-famous...>.
Discuss the poem It is not seemly to be famous... with the community...
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In