In distant lands, on hill and plain,
thus do I dream, when nights are long, —
and memory gives back again
the whisper of that long-lost song.
— V. Nabokov

In distant lands, on hill and plain,
thus do I dream, when nights are long, —
and memory gives back again
the whisper of that long-lost song.
— V. Nabokov

I have no need, for my nocturnal travels,
of ships, I have no need of trains.
The moon’s above the checkerboard-like garden.
The window’s open. I am set.
— V. Nabokov

Not quite a bed, not quite a bench.
Wallpaper: a grim yellow.
A pair of chairs. A squinty looking-glass.
We enter — my shadow and I.
— V. Nabokov

in that townlet in the towers’ shadow
the sound of life was reckless clatter,
the mixture of tipsy antiquity
and of the present liveliness
were healthful for me: my soul’s ready
to relish everything beneath the moon,
the ancient and the new.
— V. Nabokov

We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,
but now I’ve looked back — and it is astonishing
to what a degree you, my youth,
seem in tints not mine, in traits not real.
— V. Nabokov

Let us fold the wings of our visions.
It’s night. Buildings, all angular, on each other
topple. Shadows are fractured.
The street lamp is a broken flame.
— Vladmir Nabokov

The fountain, loftily floating
its wondrous, its silvery voice,
plashes, and quivers, convoking
mirages of love and of loss.
— Vladimir Nabokov
