Люблю тебя, Петра творенье... [Lyublyu tebya, Petra tvoren'e...] [English translation]

I love thee, city of peter's making

i love thy harmonies austere

And Neva's Sovran waters breaking

Along the banks of granite sheer

Thy traceried iron gates, thy sparkling

Yet Moouless, mediative gloom

And thy transparent twilight darkling

And when I write within my room

or Lampless, read - then, sunk, in slumber

The empty thoroughfares, past number

Are piled, stand clear upon the night

The admiralty spire is bright

Nor may the darkness mount, to smother

The golden cloudland of the light

For soon one dawn succeeds another

With barely half-an-hour of night

I love thy ruthless winter, lowering

With bitter frost and windless air

The sledges along Neva scouring

Girls' cheeks - no roses so bright and fair!

The flash and noise of balls, the chatter

The bachelor's house of feasting, too

The cups that foam and hiss and spatter

The punch that in the bowl burns blue

I love the warlike animation

On playing-fields of Mars to see

The troops of foot and horse in station

And their superb monotony

Their ordered, undulating muster

Flags tattered on the glorious day

Those brazen helmets in their luster

Shot through and riddled in the fray

I love thee, city of soldiers, blowing

Smoke from thy forts, thy booming gun

-- Northern empress is bestowing

Upon the royal house a son

Or when, another battle won,

Proud Russia holds her celebration

Or when the Neva breaking free

Her dark-blue ice bears out to sea

And scents the spring, in exultation

Now, city of Peter, stand thou fast

Foursquare like Russia, vaunt thy splendor!

The very element shall surrender

And make her peace with thee at last

Their ancient bondage and their rancors

The finnish waves shall buy deep

Nor vex with idle spite that cankers

Our Peter's everlasting sleep!