Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/32

26 fruit must be trimmed, and the soul must go through a baptism of fire.&hellip; Growth, progress is thus ever the casting off of an old self, and Scheiden thut weh. Detachment hurts. A new birth can take place only amid throes of agony. Hence the following lines of Pushkin on the poet:—

9. This is as yet only discernment that the bard must needs suffer; by-and-by comes also the fulfilment, the recognition of the wisdom of the sorrow, and with it its joyful acceptance in the poem of "The Prophet."

And out he tore my sinful tongue

And ope he cut with sword my breast

And out he took my trembling heart

And a coal with gleaming blaze

Into the opened breast he shoved.