Konstantin Batyushkov

Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov (1787–1855), born in Vologda, served as an officer in the Napoleonic wars and was wounded in 1807 and 1813–14. His smooth, sensuous elegies and epistles, drawing on Italian and French models, were a strong influence on the young Pushkin. From about 1821 he suffered from mental illness and wrote nothing more; he died in Vologda in 1855.

The versions here are by John Bowring, from his Specimens of the Russian Poets (Part the First, 1821; Part the Second, 1823), one of the first English anthologies of Russian verse. They are free, rhymed versions, and should be read as period translations rather than as literal renderings.