1. Oh, look at her, so young, so fair This is the earliest lyric published by Boratynsky under his name. Its addressee was the poet's favorite aunt, in whose family he spent all the time after his expulsion from the Pages’ Corps. The image central to the lyric is traditional: Time (Chronos), scythe in hand, confronting a beauty and predicting a grim end to her. The theme of arrested movement, whether in relation to history or a natural element, inspired several of Boratynsky's mature poems (see arrested movement in the Boratynsky index).

2. To Alína

Nothing is known about Alína. Even the name may be fictitious (an abbreviation of Alexandra) or conventional, like Delia and several others. One candidate has been suggested, but the “romance” between the children took place when the poet was ten years old. In this context, the number twelve makes no sense. The final verse reproduces the cliché of a disconsolate lover who has given up hope that his feelings will be reciprocated.

3. To Krenitsyn

Kreníntsyn was Boratynsky's friend in the Pages’ Corps. They parted in 1816, after the poet's expulsion, and met again two years later. Under anyone else's pen, a harangue from the lips of a nineteen-year-old man directed at a friend of the same age would have aroused an ironic smile. But everything Boratynsky said was true: his were sobering experience, repentance of youthful frolics and poor health (a probable early reference to depression). The rest is a tribute to the genre of a didactic elegy “from the position of wisdom.” The pointe is formulaic. Boratynsky gave up strings of exclamatory sentences rather early (note their overabundance in “Fragments,” No. 6.); his style is noted for its lack of exuberance, according well with his somber mood and self-restraint. Exclamations reemerged in great numbers only at the end of his life when anger and frustration became the dominant theme of his lyrics.