Having again and again convinced myself that your Excellency likes to converse about science, I eagerly await a pleasant meeting with you, in order to satisfy you with my latest endeavours, for it is not possible to communicate them all to you at a distance. I cannot see when I shall be able to arrange, as I had promised, the optical apparatus in your Excellency’s house, for there are no floors, nor ceilings, nor staircases in it yet, and I lately walked around in it with no small degree of danger to myself. The electric balls I shall send you, as you wish, without delay, as soon as possible. I must inform your Excellency that there is here a great scarcity in mechanics, so that I have not been able to get anywhere, not even at your estate, a joiner for any money, to build me an electric apparatus, so that up to the present I have been making use, instead of a terrestrial machine, of the clouds, to which I have had a pole erected from the roof. Whatever instruments your Excellency may need, I beg you to permit me to report in the office of the Academy in your name that the orders for them should be given to the mechanics, or else the business will be endlessly prolonged. In fine, I remain, with the expression of deep respect, your most humble and faithful servant, Mikháylo Lomonósov. St. Petersburg, May 31, 1753. ODE IN HONOUR OF THE EMPRESS ANNA, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CAPTURE OF KHOTÍN FROM THE TURKS, BY THE RUSSIAN ARMIES, IN 1739 A sudden ecstasy has seized my soul; it transports me to the summit of a lofty mountain, where the wind has ceased to howl, and all is hushed in the deep valleys below. Silent are the listening streams, to which it is natural to murmur, or with loud rush to roll down the mountains; crowns of laurel are weaving; thither rumour is seen to hasten; afar off the blue smoke rises in the fields. Is not Pindus beneath my feet? I hear the sweet music of the pure sisters. Parnassian fire burns within me. I hasten to the sacred band. They offer me to taste of the healing stream. “Drink, and forget thy troubles; bathe thine eyes in Castilian dew; stretch them forth over the deserts and hills, and fix them on the spot where the bright light of day is seen rising out of the dark shadows of night.” As a ship, amidst the angry waves which seek to overwhelm her, sails on triumphantly, and appears to threaten should they dare to impede her course; grey froth foams around her, her track is imprinted in the deep; thus crowds of Tartars rush towards and surround the Russian forces, but in vain; powerless and breathless they fall.