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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  The Cup of Life

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Cup of Life

By Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841)

Translation of A. E. Staley

WE quaff life’s cup with dim,

With covered eyes;

We blur its golden rim

With tears and sighs.

When from our brows at death

The bonds shall fall,

And with them vanisheth

False festival,—

Then shall we see that naught

The cup outpours;

A dream the draught so sought,

And that—not ours.