Site of the Seminar

...I'm back, I see again
The earth's dim corner where two quiet years
I spent in banishment. Since then another
Ten years have come and gone, and much in life
Has changed. I too have changed, obedient
To nature's law. But now the past anew
Revives and grips my heart, enveloping
The whole of me. It is as if I walked
In these green groves but yesternight.
There stands
The house, an exile's lone retreat, where I
Lived with my poor old nurse. She is no more;
No longer do I hear behind the wall
Her heavy, shuffling steps, nor feel her kind
And vigilant surveillance.

Yonder rears
The wooden knoll, on whose green top, unmoving,
Four hours I used to sit and gaze upon
The lake below and wistfully recall
A shore and waters far removed from these.
The lake, a wide expanse of purest blue,
Lies amid golden fields; mysterious
Its currents are; a fisherman his boat
Across it guides and calmly drags behind him
Small villages are strewn
Upon its sloping shores; beyond them shows
A bent and crooked windmill; painfully,
Helped by the wind, it turns its creaking vanes.
Where end my lands ancestral, and a road,
Rutted by rains, begins its climb uphill,
Three massive pines rise skyward: to of them
Stand side by side; the third, apart. When I
On moonlit nights would past them slowly ride,
The rustling of their crowns fell on my ears:
'Twas thus they greeted me and made me welcome.
I took this road to-day and saw the trees:
They rose before me, whispering and swaying
As in those days long past, and were unchanged.
But close beside their ancient roots and gnarled,
Where once spread naked ground, a family
Of pines, a whole new grove, has now sprung up.
Beneath the trees, small bushes, green and fresh,
Like children crowd, while, as of yore, their dour
And aging friend, a bachelor, still stands
Apart from all, and roundabout all is
As bare as e'er it was and nothing grows.

Hail, youth! Hail, strange new wondrous tribe!
Another,
Not I will see you in your riper years
When, mighty, you outgrow my three old friends
And their dark, wind-swayed crowns shield from the eyes
Of wayfarers. Let my descendant hear
Your sound of welcome when, returning from
An evening spent in friendly, heartfelt talk,
Full of the pleasing, warming afterglow
Of easy comradeship and cheering thoughts,
He passes you at night with slowing steps
And thinks of me.

A. S. Pushkin