To My Dressing Gown Poem by Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov

How I love you, dressing gown!
Oh, how I love you, dressing gown!
Attire of idleness and sloth,
Of untold pleasures, good old friend
And of poetic joys!
So let the serfs of Aries
Enjoy their binding livery;
I'm free in body as in soul.
Of the afflictions of our age,
Of all life's battles and its emptiness.
I'm saved, I live in harmony!
The waywardness and will of kings
Will never blot my youth -
For life clothed in my dressing gown
Exceeds in sweetness many times
The senseless life of kings.

The shining golden moon presides
Above the evening firmament;
The bustling cities silent lie
The thinking student does not sleep:
Wrapped in an author's dressing gown
Disdaining blind society's noise,
In ecstasies of thought, he mocks
The Herostratus of our times;
He does not fancy in his dreams
The dirks of Sand or of Louvelle,
And all our vacant fame cannot
Annoy his elevated soul.
Between his lips, a simple pipe,
Beside him beeswax candles stand;
In prideful ease he lolls about
Absorbed in living genius' dreams-
And to the patient clothier
Who sewed his dressing gown gives thanks!