Do not compare: who lives is beyond compare.
Embracing the equality of the plains
I felt somehow caressed and scared,
and the sky's circle was my pain. 

And I addressed my servants the air,
Awaiting tidings from him or service,
And I prepared to sail, and sailed the arc
Of uninitiated journeys. 

Where there is more sky for me, there I am
.....ready to roam,
And clear despair will not release me
From the Voronezh hills, which are still young,
To the all-human hills of Tuscany. 

-- Osip Mandelstam (1937); trans by Ilya Bernstein