Lermontov’s 1831 poem “St. Helena” on the exile and grave of Napoleon

Let us greet with a salutation the lonely island,
Where often, sunk in thought,
On the shore, of distant France
Napoleon would remember!
Son of the sea, amid the seas is your grave!
Here is vengeance for the torments of so many days!
The sinful country did not deserve
That the great man should end his life in it.
A gloomy exile, a victim of treachery
And of the blind caprice of fate,
He perished as he had lived, without forebears or posterity,
Though vanquished, yet a hero!
He was born by the sport of chance fate
And flew past us like a storm.
He was a stranger to the world. Everything in him was a mystery,
The day of his rise and the hour of his fall!

Literal translation

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, “St Helena”, 1831

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Lermontov’s 1831 poem “St. Helena” on the exile and grave of Napoleon

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