Nightingales A Sigh A Whisper, Some doubts surround the exact date of birth but reports suggest that Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was born on the 5th December 1820 which was two years before his Russian nobleman father Afanasy Shenshin married the divorcee Charlotta Foeth in Germany. He was therefore placed into the category known as a raznochinet, literally a person who does not belong to any particular class or state. He was not allowed to take his father’s name of Shenshin and, not surprisingly, all of this was a source of great distress to Fet for the whole of his life.
As soon as he was old enough he was sent away to a boarding school in Estonia and from there he moved to Moscow University in 1838 to study philology. He began writing poetry while at university and was able to publish his first collection in 1840, called The Lyrical Pantheon. Fet really came to the attention of the literary world in 1842 when his poems were seen regularly in magazines such as Moskovityanin and Otechestvennye zapiski, all of which received a great deal of praise from all quarters.
Nightingales A Sigh A Whisper by Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet
Nightingales A Sigh A Whisper
Nightingales, a sigh, a whisper
In a shady nook
And the lullaby in silver
Of a lazy brook.
Light of night and midnight shadow
Falling from above
And the changing mood and magic
Of a face you love
Through dark clouds a red rose peeping
And an amber gleam,
And the kissing and the weeping
And the dawn serene!
