Things of great worth shall come to pass...

Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)



Things of great worth shall come to pass
By true foreknowledge and in fact,—
Names worthier than mine in fame
And words which earned me men's esteem.

Here breakers roar across the bay;
Wave follows wave unchangeably,
Their tracks, like letters traced in sand,
Erased by ebbing lines of foam.

So yet you're here at this resort.
I should have found you in this hall
At five, instead of vain small talk
I shared and wagging of my tongue.

I would have warned you, one so fair,
Mature, a woman brave and calm,
About the death in life-and bounds
No higher than the ant's low life.

Great poets, through experience,
Find words so simple and restrained
That in the end they can't do more
Than wait in silence and in awe.

In faith and kinship with real life
And with the future knit as one,
We're bound to find immortal words
Of unbelievable simplicity.

Yet keep them holy in your hearts
Or we shall not be spared at all.
Men quickly grasp the complex schemes
When simplicity's their greater need.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

56 sec read
61

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXXX XAXX XAXX XXXB XXXX BXXX XAXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 970
Words 183
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. more…

All Boris Pasternak poems | Boris Pasternak Books

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