initial commit of ebook 23997HEADmain

1 files changed, 8053 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/23997.txt b/23997.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac034c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/23997.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8053 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Eugene Oneguine [Onegin], by Aleksandr
+Sergeevich Pushkin, Translated by Henry Spalding
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Eugene Oneguine [Onegin]
+       A Romance of Russian Life in Verse
+
+
+Author: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 27, 2007  [eBook #23997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE ONEGUINE [ONEGIN]***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Stephen Leary <www.stephenleary.com>
+
+
+
+EUGENE ONEGUINE [Onegin]:
+
+A Romance of Russian Life in Verse
+
+by
+
+ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
+
+Translated from the Russian by Lieut.-Col. [Henry] Spalding
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Macmillan and Co.
+1881
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Eugene Oneguine, the chief poetical work of Russia's greatest poet,
+having been translated into all the principal languages of Europe
+except our own, I hope that this version may prove an acceptable
+contribution to literature. Tastes are various in matters of poetry,
+but the present work possesses a more solid claim to attention in
+the series of faithful pictures it offers of Russian life and manners.
+If these be compared with Mr. Wallace's book on Russia, it will be
+seen that social life in that empire still preserves many of the
+characteristics which distinguished it half a century ago--the period
+of the first publication of the latter cantos of this poem.
+
+Many references will be found in it to our own country and its
+literature. Russian poets have carefully plagiarized the English--
+notably Joukovski. Pushkin, however, was no plagiarist, though
+undoubtedly his mind was greatly influenced by the genius of Byron--
+more especially in the earliest part of his career. Indeed, as will
+be remarked in the following pages, he scarcely makes an effort to
+disguise this fact.
+
+The biographical sketch is of course a mere outline. I did not think
+a longer one advisable, as memoirs do not usually excite much interest
+till the subjects of them are pretty well known. In the "notes" I
+have endeavored to elucidate a somewhat obscure subject. Some of the
+poet's allusions remain enigmatical to the present day. The point of
+each sarcasm naturally passed out of mind together with the society
+against which it was levelled. If some of the versification is rough
+and wanting in "go," I must plead in excuse the difficult form of the
+stanza, and in many instances the inelastic nature of the subject
+matter to be versified. Stanza XXXV Canto II forms a good example
+of the latter difficulty, and is omitted in the German and French
+versions to which I have had access. The translation of foreign
+verse is comparatively easy so long as it is confined to conventional
+poetic subjects, but when it embraces abrupt scraps of conversation
+and the description of local customs it becomes a much more arduous
+affair. I think I may say that I have adhered closely to the text
+of the original.
+
+The following foreign translations of this poem have appeared:
+
+1. French prose. Oeuvres choisis de Pouchekine. H. Dupont. Paris,
+1847.
+
+2. German verse. A. Puschkin's poetische Werke. F. Bodenstedt.
+Berlin, 1854.
+
+3. Polish verse. Eugeniusz Oniegin. Roman Aleksandra Puszkina.
+A. Sikorski. Vilnius, 1847.
+
+4. Italian prose. Racconti poetici di A. Puschkin, tradotti da
+A. Delatre. Firenze, 1856.
+
+London, May 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   Mon Portrait
+   A Short Biographical Notice of Alexander Pushkin
+   Eugene Oneguine
+   Canto I:    "The Spleen"
+   Canto II:   The Poet
+   Canto III:  The Country Damsel
+   Canto IV:   Rural Life
+   Canto V:    The Fete
+   Canto VI:   The Duel
+   Canto VII:  Moscow
+   Canto VIII: The Great World
+
+
+
+
+Mon Portrait
+
+Written by the poet at the age of 15.
+
+Vous me demandez mon portrait,
+Mais peint d'apres nature:
+Mon cher, il sera bientot fait,
+Quoique en miniature.
+
+Je suis un jeune polisson
+Encore dans les classes;
+Point sot, je le dis sans facon,
+Et sans fades grimaces.
+
+Oui! il ne fut babillard
+Ni docteur de Sorbonne,
+Plus ennuyeux et plus braillard
+Que moi-meme en personne.
+
+Ma taille, a celle des plus longs,
+Elle n'est point egalee;
+J'ai le teint frais, les cheveux blonds,
+Et la tete bouclee.
+
+J'aime et le monde et son fracas,
+Je hais la solitude;
+J'abhorre et noises et debats,
+Et tant soit peu l'etude.
+
+Spectacles, bals, me plaisent fort,
+Et d'apres ma pensee,
+Je dirais ce que j'aime encore,
+Si je n'etais au Lycee.
+
+Apres cela, mon cher ami,
+L'on peut me reconnaitre,
+Oui! tel que le bon Dieu me fit,
+Je veux toujours paraitre.
+
+Vrai demon, par l'espieglerie,
+Vrai singe par sa mine,
+Beaucoup et trop d'etourderie,
+Ma foi! voila Pouchekine.
+
+
+
+Note: Russian proper names to be pronounced as in French (the nasal
+sound of m and n excepted) in the following translation. The accent,
+which is very arbitrary in the Russian language, is indicated
+unmistakably in a rhythmical composition.
+
+
+
+
+A Short Biographical Notice of Alexander Pushkin.
+
+Alexander Sergevitch Pushkin was born in 1799 at Pskoff, and was
+a scion of an ancient Russian family. In one of his letters it is
+recorded that no less than six Pushkins signed the Charta declaratory
+of the election of the Romanoff family to the throne of Russia, and
+that two more affixed their marks from inability to write.
+
+In 1811 he entered the Lyceum, an aristocratic educational
+establishment at Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg, where he was
+the friend and schoolmate of Prince Gortchakoff the Russian
+Chancellor. As a scholar he displayed no remarkable amount of
+capacity, but was fond of general reading and much given to
+versification. Whilst yet a schoolboy he wrote many lyrical
+compositions and commenced _Ruslan and Liudmila_, his first poem
+of any magnitude, and, it is asserted, the first readable one ever
+produced in the Russian language. During his boyhood he came much
+into contact with the poets Dmitrieff and Joukovski, who were
+intimate with his father, and his uncle, Vassili Pushkin, himself
+an author of no mean repute. The friendship of the historian
+Karamzine must have exercised a still more beneficial influence
+upon him.
+
+In 1817 he quitted the Lyceum and obtained an appointment in the
+Foreign Office at St. Petersburg. Three years of reckless
+dissipation in the capital, where his lyrical talent made him
+universally popular, resulted in 1818 in a putrid fever which
+was near carrying him off. At this period of his life he scarcely
+slept at all; worked all day and dissipated at night. Society was
+open to him from the palace of the prince to the officers'
+quarters of the Imperial Guard. The reflection of this mode of
+life may be noted in the first canto of _Eugene Oneguine_ and the
+early dissipations of the "Philosopher just turned eighteen,"--
+the exact age of Pushkin when he commenced his career in the
+Russian capital.
+
+In 1820 he was transferred to the bureau of Lieutenant-General
+Inzoff, at Kishineff in Bessarabia. This event was probably due
+to his composing and privately circulating an "Ode to Liberty,"
+though the attendant circumstances have never yet been thoroughly
+brought to light. An indiscreet admiration for Byron most likely
+involved the young poet in this scrape. The tenor of this
+production, especially its audacious allusion to the murder of
+the emperor Paul, father of the then reigning Tsar, assuredly
+deserved, according to aristocratic ideas, the deportation to
+Siberia which was said to have been prepared for the author.
+The intercession of Karamzine and Joukovski procured a commutation
+of his sentence. Strangely enough, Pushkin appeared anxious to
+deceive the public as to the real cause of his sudden disappearance
+from the capital; for in an Ode to Ovid composed about this time
+he styles himself a "voluntary exile." (See Note 4 to this volume.)
+
+During the four succeeding years he made numerous excursions amid
+the beautiful countries which from the basin of the Euxine--and
+amongst these the Crimea and the Caucasus. A nomad life passed
+amid the beauties of nature acted powerfully in developing his
+poetical genius. To this period he refers in the final canto of
+_Eugene Oneguine_ (st. v.), when enumerating the various influences
+which had contributed to the formation of his Muse:
+
+     Then, the far capital forgot,
+     Its splendour and its blandishments,
+     In poor Moldavia cast her lot,
+     She visited the humble tents
+     Of migratory gipsy hordes.
+
+During these pleasant years of youth he penned some of his most
+delightful poetical works: amongst these, _The Prisoner of the
+Caucasus, The Fountain of Baktchiserai_, and the _Gipsies_. Of the
+two former it may be said that they are in the true style of the
+_Giaour_ and the _Corsair_. In fact, just at that point of time
+Byron's fame--like the setting sun--shone out with dazzling lustre
+and irresistibly charmed the mind of Pushkin amongst many others.
+The _Gipsies_ is more original; indeed the poet himself has been
+identified with Aleko, the hero of the tale, which may well be
+founded on his own personal adventures without involving the guilt
+of a double murder. His undisguised admiration for Byron doubtless
+exposed him to imputations similar to those commonly levelled
+against that poet. But Pushkin's talent was too genuine for him to
+remain long subservient to that of another, and in a later period
+of his career he broke loose from all trammels and selected a line
+peculiarly his own. Before leaving this stage in our narrative we
+may point out the fact that during the whole of this period of
+comparative seclusion the poet was indefatigably occupied in
+study. Not only were the standard works of European literature
+perused, but two more languages--namely Italian and Spanish--were
+added to his original stock: French, English, Latin and German
+having been acquired at the Lyceum. To this happy union of
+literary research with the study of nature we must attribute the
+sudden bound by which he soon afterwards attained the pinnacle of
+poetic fame amongst his own countrymen.
+
+In 1824 he once more fell under the imperial displeasure. A letter
+seized in the post, and expressive of atheistical sentiments
+(possibly but a transient vagary of his youth) was the ostensible
+cause of his banishment from Odessa to his paternal estate of
+Mikhailovskoe in the province of Pskoff. Some, however, aver that
+personal pique on the part of Count Vorontsoff, the Governor of
+Odessa, played a part in the transaction. Be this as it may, the
+consequences were serious for the poet, who was not only placed
+under the surveillance of the police, but expelled from the
+Foreign Office by express order of the Tsar "for bad conduct." A
+letter on this subject, addressed by Count Vorontsoff to Count
+Nesselrode, is an amusing instance of the arrogance with which
+stolid mediocrity frequently passes judgment on rising genius. I
+transcribe a portion thereof:
+
+
+     Odessa, _28th March (7th April)_ 1824
+
+Count--Your Excellency is aware of the reasons for which, some
+time ago, young Pushkin was sent with a letter from Count Capo
+d'Istria to General Inzoff. I found him already here when I
+arrived, the General having placed him at my disposal, though he
+himself was at Kishineff. I have no reason to complain about him.
+On the contrary, he is much steadier than formerly. But a desire
+for the welfare of the young man himself, who is not wanting in
+ability, and whose faults proceed more from the head than from
+the heart, impels me to urge upon you his removal from Odessa.
+Pushkin's chief failing is ambition. He spent the bathing season
+here, and has gathered round him a crowd of adulators who praise
+his genius. This maintains in him a baneful delusion which seems
+to turn his head--namely, that he is a "distinguished writer;"
+whereas, in reality he is but a feeble imitator of an author in
+whose favour very little can be said (Byron). This it is which
+keeps him from a serious study of the great classical poets, which
+might exercise a beneficial effect upon his talents--which cannot
+be denied him--and which might make of him in course of time a
+"distinguished writer."
+
+The best thing that can be done for him is to remove him hence....
+
+The Emperor Nicholas on his accession pardoned Pushkin and received
+him once more into favour. During an interview which took place it
+is said that the Tsar promised the poet that he alone would in
+future be the censor of his productions. Pushkin was restored to
+his position in the Foreign Office and received the appointment of
+Court Historian. In 1828 he published one of his finest poems,
+_Poltava_, which is founded on incidents familiar to English
+readers in Byron's _Mazeppa_. In 1829 the hardy poet accompanied
+the Russian army which under Paskevitch captured Erzeroum. In 1831
+he married a beautiful lady of the Gontchareff family and settled
+in the neighbourhood of St. Petersburg, where he remained for the
+remainder of his life, only occasionally visiting Moscow and
+Mikhailovskoe. During this period his chief occupation consisted
+in collecting and investigating materials for a projected history
+of Peter the Great, which was undertaken at the express desire of
+the Emperor. He likewise completed a history of the revolt of
+Pougatchoff, which occurred in the reign of Catherine II. [Note:
+this individual having personated Peter III, the deceased husband
+of the Empress, raised the Orenburg Cossacks in revolt. This revolt
+was not suppressed without extensive destruction of life and
+property.] In 1833 the poet visited Orenburg, the scene of the
+dreadful excesses he recorded; the fruit of his journey being one
+of the most charming tales ever written, _The Captain's Daughter_.
+[Note: Translated in _Russian Romance_, by Mrs. Telfer, 1875.]
+
+The remaining years of Pushkin's life, spent in the midst of
+domestic bliss and grateful literary occupation, were what
+lookers-on style "years of unclouded happiness." They were,
+however, drawing rapidly to a close. Unrivalled distinction rarely
+fails to arouse bitter animosity amongst the envious, and Pushkin's
+existence had latterly been embittered by groundless insinuations
+against his wife's reputation in the shape of anonymous letters
+addressed to himself and couched in very insulting language. He
+fancied he had traced them to one Georges d'Anthes, a Frenchman
+in the Cavalier Guard, who had been adopted by the Dutch envoy
+Heeckeren. D'Anthes, though he had espoused Madame Pushkin's
+sister, had conducted himself with impropriety towards the former
+lady. The poet displayed in this affair a fierce hostility quite
+characteristic of his African origin but which drove him to his
+destruction. D'Anthes, it was subsequently admitted, was not the
+author of the anonymous letters; but as usual when a duel is
+proposed, an appeal to reason was thought to smack of cowardice.
+The encounter took place in February 1837 on one of the islands of
+the Neva. The weapons used were pistols, and the combat was of a
+determined, nay ferocious character. Pushkin was shot before he
+had time to fire, and, in his fall, the barrel of his pistol
+became clogged with snow which lay deep upon the ground at the
+time. Raising himself on his elbow, the wounded man called for
+another pistol, crying, "I've strength left to fire my shot!" He
+fired, and slightly wounded his opponent, shouting "Bravo!" when
+he heard him exclaim that he was hit. D'Anthes was, however, but
+slightly contused whilst Pushkin was shot through the abdomen. He
+was transported to his residence and expired after several days
+passed in extreme agony. Thus perished in the thirty-eighth year of
+his age this distinguished poet, in a manner and amid surroundings
+which make the duel scene in the sixth canto of this poem seem
+almost prophetic. His reflections on the premature death of Lenski
+appear indeed strangely applicable to his own fate, as generally
+to the premature extinction of genius.
+
+Pushkin was endowed with a powerful physical organisation. He was
+fond of long walks, unlike the generality of his countrymen, and
+at one time of his career used daily to foot it into St. Petersburg
+and back, from his residence in the suburbs, to conduct his
+investigations in the Government archives when employed on the
+History of Peter the Great. He was a good swordsman, rode well,
+and at one time aspired to enter the cavalry; but his father not
+being able to furnish the necessary funds he declined serving in
+the less romantic infantry. Latterly he was regular in his habits;
+rose early, retired late, and managed to get along with but very
+little sleep. On rising he betook himself forthwith to his literary
+occupations, which were continued till afternoon, when they gave
+place to physical exercise. Strange as it will appear to many, he
+preferred the autumn months, especially when rainy, chill and
+misty, for the production of his literary compositions, and was
+proportionally depressed by the approach of spring. (Cf. Canto
+VII st. ii.)
+
+     Mournful is thine approach to me,
+     O Spring, thou chosen time of love
+
+He usually left St. Petersburg about the middle of September and
+remained in the country till December. In this space of time it was
+his custom to develop and perfect the inspirations of the
+remaining portion of the year. He was of an impetuous yet
+affectionate nature and much beloved by a numerous circle of
+friends. An attractive feature in his character was his unalterable
+attachment to his aged nurse, a sentiment which we find reflected
+in the pages of _Eugene Oneguine_ and elsewhere.
+
+The preponderating influence which Byron exercised in the formation
+of his genius has already been noticed. It is indeed probable that
+we owe _Oneguine_ to the combined impressions of _Childe Harold_ and
+_Don Juan_ upon his mind. Yet the Russian poem excels these
+masterpieces of Byron in a single particular--namely, in completeness
+of narrative, the plots of the latter being mere vehicles for the
+development of the poet's general reflections. There is ground for
+believing that Pushkin likewise made this poem the record of his
+own experience. This has doubtless been the practice of many
+distinguished authors of fiction whose names will readily occur to
+the reader. Indeed, as we are never cognizant of the real motives
+which actuate others, it follows that nowhere can the secret springs
+of human action be studied to such advantage as within our own
+breasts. Thus romance is sometimes but the reflection of the writer's
+own individuality, and he adopts the counsel of the American poet:
+
+     Look then into thine heart and write!
+
+But a further consideration of this subject would here be out of
+place. Perhaps I cannot more suitably conclude this sketch than by
+quoting from his _Ode to the Sea_ the poet's tribute of admiration
+to the genius of Napoleon and Byron, who of all contemporaries seem
+the most to have swayed his imagination.
+
+     Farewell, thou pathway of the free,
+     For the last time thy waves I view
+     Before me roll disdainfully,
+     Brilliantly beautiful and blue.
+
+     Why vain regret? Wherever now
+     My heedless course I may pursue
+     One object on thy desert brow
+     I everlastingly shall view--
+
+     A rock, the sepulchre of Fame!
+     The poor remains of greatness gone
+     A cold remembrance there became,
+     There perished great Napoleon.
+
+     In torment dire to sleep he lay;
+     Then, as a tempest echoing rolls,
+     Another genius whirled away,
+     Another sovereign of our souls.
+
+     He perished. Freedom wept her child,
+     He left the world his garland bright.
+     Wail, Ocean, surge in tumult wild,
+     To sing of thee was his delight.
+
+     Impressed upon him was thy mark,
+     His genius moulded was by thee;
+     Like thee, he was unfathomed, dark
+     And untamed in his majesty.
+
+Note: It may interest some to know that Georges d'Anthes was tried
+by court-martial for his participation in the duel in which Pushkin
+fell, found guilty, and reduced to the ranks; but, not being a
+Russian subject, he was conducted by a gendarme across the frontier
+and then set at liberty.
+
+
+
+
+Eugene Oneguine
+
+Petri de vanite, il avait encore plus de cette espece d'orgueil, qui
+fait avouer avec la meme indifference les bonnes comme les mauvaises
+actions, suite d'un sentiment de superiorite, peut-etre imaginaire.--
+_Tire d'une lettre particuliere_.
+
+
+[Note: Written in 1823 at Kishineff and Odessa.]
+
+
+
+CANTO THE FIRST
+
+'The Spleen'
+
+'He rushes at life and exhausts the passions.'
+                                Prince Viazemski
+
+
+Canto the First
+
+I
+
+"My uncle's goodness is extreme,
+If seriously he hath disease;
+He hath acquired the world's esteem
+And nothing more important sees;
+A paragon of virtue he!
+But what a nuisance it will be,
+Chained to his bedside night and day
+Without a chance to slip away.
+Ye need dissimulation base
+A dying man with art to soothe,
+Beneath his head the pillow smooth,
+And physic bring with mournful face,
+To sigh and meditate alone:
+When will the devil take his own!"
+
+II
+
+Thus mused a madcap young, who drove
+Through clouds of dust at postal pace,
+By the decree of Mighty Jove,
+Inheritor of all his race.
+Friends of Liudmila and Ruslan,(1)
+Let me present ye to the man,
+Who without more prevarication
+The hero is of my narration!
+Oneguine, O my gentle readers,
+Was born beside the Neva, where
+It may be ye were born, or there
+Have shone as one of fashion's leaders.
+I also wandered there of old,
+But cannot stand the northern cold.(2)
+
+[Note 1: _Ruslan and Liudmila_, the title of Pushkin's first
+important work, written 1817-20. It is a tale relating the adventures
+of the knight-errant Ruslan in search of his fair lady Liudmila, who
+has been carried off by a _kaldoon_, or magician.]
+
+[Note 2: Written in Bessarabia.]
+
+III
+
+Having performed his service truly,
+Deep into debt his father ran;
+Three balls a year he gave ye duly,
+At last became a ruined man.
+But Eugene was by fate preserved,
+For first "madame" his wants observed,
+And then "monsieur" supplied her place;(3)
+The boy was wild but full of grace.
+"Monsieur l'Abbe," a starving Gaul,
+Fearing his pupil to annoy,
+Instructed jestingly the boy,
+Morality taught scarce at all;
+Gently for pranks he would reprove
+And in the Summer Garden rove.
+
+[Note 3: In Russia foreign tutors and governesses are commonly
+styled "monsieur" or "madame."]
+
+IV
+
+When youth's rebellious hour drew near
+And my Eugene the path must trace--
+The path of hope and tender fear--
+Monsieur clean out of doors they chase.
+Lo! my Oneguine free as air,
+Cropped in the latest style his hair,
+Dressed like a London dandy he
+The giddy world at last shall see.
+He wrote and spoke, so all allowed,
+In the French language perfectly,
+Danced the mazurka gracefully,
+Without the least constraint he bowed.
+What more's required? The world replies,
+He is a charming youth and wise.
+
+V
+
+We all of us of education
+A something somehow have obtained,
+Thus, praised be God! a reputation
+With us is easily attained.
+Oneguine was--so many deemed
+[Unerring critics self-esteemed],
+Pedantic although scholar like,
+In truth he had the happy trick
+Without constraint in conversation
+Of touching lightly every theme.
+Silent, oracular ye'd see him
+Amid a serious disputation,
+Then suddenly discharge a joke
+The ladies' laughter to provoke.
+
+VI
+
+Latin is just now not in vogue,
+But if the truth I must relate,
+Oneguine knew enough, the rogue
+A mild quotation to translate,
+A little Juvenal to spout,
+With "vale" finish off a note;
+Two verses he could recollect
+Of the Aeneid, but incorrect.
+In history he took no pleasure,
+The dusty chronicles of earth
+For him were but of little worth,
+Yet still of anecdotes a treasure
+Within his memory there lay,
+From Romulus unto our day.
+
+VII
+
+For empty sound the rascal swore he
+Existence would not make a curse,
+Knew not an iamb from a choree,
+Although we read him heaps of verse.
+Homer, Theocritus, he jeered,
+But Adam Smith to read appeared,
+And at economy was great;
+That is, he could elucidate
+How empires store of wealth unfold,
+How flourish, why and wherefore less
+If the raw product they possess
+The medium is required of gold.
+The father scarcely understands
+His son and mortgages his lands.
+
+VIII
+
+But upon all that Eugene knew
+I have no leisure here to dwell,
+But say he was a genius who
+In one thing really did excel.
+It occupied him from a boy,
+A labour, torment, yet a joy,
+It whiled his idle hours away
+And wholly occupied his day--
+The amatory science warm,
+Which Ovid once immortalized,
+For which the poet agonized
+Laid down his life of sun and storm
+On the steppes of Moldavia lone,
+Far from his Italy--his own.(4)
+
+[Note 4: Referring to Tomi, the reputed place of exile of Ovid.
+Pushkin, then residing in Bessarabia, was in the same predicament
+as his predecessor in song, though he certainly did not plead
+guilty to the fact, since he remarks in his ode to Ovid:
+                       To exile _self-consigned_,
+   With self, society, existence, discontent,
+   I visit in these days, with melancholy mind,
+   The country whereunto a mournful age thee sent.
+
+Ovid thus enumerates the causes which brought about his banishment:
+
+   "Perdiderint quum me _duo_ crimina, carmen et error,
+   Alterius facti culpa silenda mihi est."
+                     _Ovidii Nasonis Tristium_, lib. ii. 207.]
+
+
+IX
+
+How soon he learnt deception's art,
+Hope to conceal and jealousy,
+False confidence or doubt to impart,
+Sombre or glad in turn to be,
+Haughty appear, subservient,
+Obsequious or indifferent!
+What languor would his silence show,
+How full of fire his speech would glow!
+How artless was the note which spoke
+Of love again, and yet again;
+How deftly could he transport feign!
+How bright and tender was his look,
+Modest yet daring! And a tear
+Would at the proper time appear.
+
+X
+
+How well he played the greenhorn's part
+To cheat the inexperienced fair,
+Sometimes by pleasing flattery's art,
+Sometimes by ready-made despair;
+The feeble moment would espy
+Of tender years the modesty
+Conquer by passion and address,
+Await the long-delayed caress.
+Avowal then 'twas time to pray,
+Attentive to the heart's first beating,
+Follow up love--a secret meeting
+Arrange without the least delay--
+Then, then--well, in some solitude
+Lessons to give he understood!
+
+XI
+
+How soon he learnt to titillate
+The heart of the inveterate flirt!
+Desirous to annihilate
+His own antagonists expert,
+How bitterly he would malign,
+With many a snare their pathway line!
+But ye, O happy husbands, ye
+With him were friends eternally:
+The crafty spouse caressed him, who
+By Faublas in his youth was schooled,(5)
+And the suspicious veteran old,
+The pompous, swaggering cuckold too,
+Who floats contentedly through life,
+Proud of his dinners and his wife!
+
+[Note 5: _Les Aventures du Chevalier de Faublas_, a romance of a
+loose character by Jean Baptiste Louvet de Couvray, b. 1760,
+d. 1797, famous for his bold oration denouncing Robespierre,
+Marat and Danton.]
+
+XII
+
+One morn whilst yet in bed he lay,
+His valet brings him letters three.
+What, invitations? The same day
+As many entertainments be!
+A ball here, there a children's treat,
+Whither shall my rapscallion flit?
+Whither shall he go first? He'll see,
+Perchance he will to all the three.
+Meantime in matutinal dress
+And hat surnamed a "Bolivar"(6)
+He hies unto the "Boulevard,"
+To loiter there in idleness
+Until the sleepless Breguet chime(7)
+Announcing to him dinner-time.
+
+[Note 6: A la "Bolivar," from the founder of Bolivian independence.]
+
+[Note 7: M. Breguet, a celebrated Parisian watchmaker--hence a
+slang term for a watch.]
+
+XIII
+
+'Tis dark. He seats him in a sleigh,
+"Drive on!" the cheerful cry goes forth,
+His furs are powdered on the way
+By the fine silver of the north.
+He bends his course to Talon's, where(8)
+He knows Kaverine will repair.(9)
+He enters. High the cork arose
+And Comet champagne foaming flows.
+Before him red roast beef is seen
+And truffles, dear to youthful eyes,
+Flanked by immortal Strasbourg pies,
+The choicest flowers of French cuisine,
+And Limburg cheese alive and old
+Is seen next pine-apples of gold.
+
+[Note 8: Talon, a famous St. Petersburg restaurateur.]
+
+[Note 9: Paul Petrovitch Kaverine, a friend for whom Pushkin in
+his youth appears to have entertained great respect and
+admiration. He was an officer in the Hussars of the Guard, and
+a noted "dandy" and man about town. The poet on one occasion
+addressed the following impromptu to his friend's portrait:
+
+   "Within him daily see the the fires of punch and war,
+   Upon the fields of Mars a gallant warrior,
+   A faithful friend to friends, of ladies torturer,
+                       But ever the Hussar."]
+
+XIV
+
+Still thirst fresh draughts of wine compels
+To cool the cutlets' seething grease,
+When the sonorous Breguet tells
+Of the commencement of the piece.
+A critic of the stage malicious,
+A slave of actresses capricious,
+Oneguine was a citizen
+Of the domains of the side-scene.
+To the theatre he repairs
+Where each young critic ready stands,
+Capers applauds with clap of hands,
+With hisses Cleopatra scares,
+Moina recalls for this alone
+That all may hear his voice's tone.
+
+XV
+
+Thou fairy-land! Where formerly
+Shone pungent Satire's dauntless king,
+Von Wisine, friend of liberty,
+And Kniajnine, apt at copying.
+The young Simeonova too there
+With Ozeroff was wont to share
+Applause, the people's donative.
+There our Katenine did revive
+Corneille's majestic genius,
+Sarcastic Shakhovskoi brought out
+His comedies, a noisy rout,
+There Didelot became glorious,
+There, there, beneath the side-scene's shade
+The drama of my youth was played.(10)
+
+[Note 10: _Denis Von Wisine_ (1741-92), a favourite Russian
+dramatist. His first comedy "The Brigadier," procured him the
+favour of the second Catherine. His best, however, is the
+"Minor" (Niedorosl). Prince Potemkin, after witnessing it,
+summoned the author, and greeted him with the exclamation,
+"Die now, Denis!" In fact, his subsequent performances were
+not of equal merit.
+
+_Jacob Borissovitch Kniajnine_ (1742-91), a clever adapter of
+French tragedy.
+
+_Simeonova_, a celebrated tragic actress, who retired from
+the stage in early life and married a Prince Gagarine.
+
+_Ozeroff_, one of the best-known Russian dramatists of the
+period; he possessed more originality than Kniajnine. "Oedipus
+in Athens," "Fingal," "Demetrius Donskoi," and "Polyxena," are
+the best known of his tragedies.
+
+_Katenine_ translated Corneille's tragedies into Russian.
+
+_Didelot_, sometime Director of the ballet at the Opera at
+St. Petersburg.]
+
+XVI
+
+My goddesses, where are your shades?
+Do ye not hear my mournful sighs?
+Are ye replaced by other maids
+Who cannot conjure former joys?
+Shall I your chorus hear anew,
+Russia's Terpsichore review
+Again in her ethereal dance?
+Or will my melancholy glance
+On the dull stage find all things changed,
+The disenchanted glass direct
+Where I can no more recollect?--
+A careless looker-on estranged
+In silence shall I sit and yawn
+And dream of life's delightful dawn?
+
+XVII
+
+The house is crammed. A thousand lamps
+On pit, stalls, boxes, brightly blaze,
+Impatiently the gallery stamps,
+The curtain now they slowly raise.
+Obedient to the magic strings,
+Brilliant, ethereal, there springs
+Forth from the crowd of nymphs surrounding
+Istomina(*) the nimbly-bounding;
+With one foot resting on its tip
+Slow circling round its fellow swings
+And now she skips and now she springs
+Like down from Aeolus's lip,
+Now her lithe form she arches o'er
+And beats with rapid foot the floor.
+
+[Note: Istomina--A celebrated Circassian dancer of the day, with
+whom the poet in his extreme youth imagined himself in love.]
+
+XVIII
+
+Shouts of applause! Oneguine passes
+Between the stalls, along the toes;
+Seated, a curious look with glasses
+On unknown female forms he throws.
+Free scope he yields unto his glance,
+Reviews both dress and countenance,
+With all dissatisfaction shows.
+To male acquaintances he bows,
+And finally he deigns let fall
+Upon the stage his weary glance.
+He yawns, averts his countenance,
+Exclaiming, "We must change 'em all!
+I long by ballets have been bored,
+Now Didelot scarce can be endured!"
+
+XIX
+
+Snakes, satyrs, loves with many a shout
+Across the stage still madly sweep,
+Whilst the tired serving-men without
+Wrapped in their sheepskins soundly sleep.
+Still the loud stamping doth not cease,
+Still they blow noses, cough, and sneeze,
+Still everywhere, without, within,
+The lamps illuminating shine;
+The steed benumbed still pawing stands
+And of the irksome harness tires,
+And still the coachmen round the fires(11)
+Abuse their masters, rub their hands:
+But Eugene long hath left the press
+To array himself in evening dress.
+
+[Note 11: In Russia large fires are lighted in winter time in front
+of the theatres for the benefit of the menials, who, considering
+the state of the thermometer, cannot be said to have a jovial
+time of it. But in this, as in other cases, "habit" alleviates
+their lot, and they bear the cold with a wonderful equanimity.]
+
+XX
+
+Faithfully shall I now depict,
+Portray the solitary den
+Wherein the child of fashion strict
+Dressed him, undressed, and dressed again?
+All that industrial London brings
+For tallow, wood and other things
+Across the Baltic's salt sea waves,
+All which caprice and affluence craves,
+All which in Paris eager taste,
+Choosing a profitable trade,
+For our amusement ever made
+And ease and fashionable waste,--
+Adorned the apartment of Eugene,
+Philosopher just turned eighteen.
+
+XXI
+
+China and bronze the tables weight,
+Amber on pipes from Stamboul glows,
+And, joy of souls effeminate,
+Phials of crystal scents enclose.
+Combs of all sizes, files of steel,
+Scissors both straight and curved as well,
+Of thirty different sorts, lo! brushes
+Both for the nails and for the tushes.
+Rousseau, I would remark in passing,(12)
+Could not conceive how serious Grimm
+Dared calmly cleanse his nails 'fore him,
+Eloquent raver all-surpassing,--
+The friend of liberty and laws
+In this case quite mistaken was.
+
+[Note 12: "Tout le monde sut qu'il (Grimm) mettait du blanc; et
+moi, qui n'en croyait rien, je commencai de le croire, non
+seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouve
+des tasses de blanc sur la toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un
+matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvais brossant ses ongles avec
+une petite vergette faite expres, ouvrage qu'il continua fierement
+devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les
+matins a brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instants a
+remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau."
+                          _Confessions de J. J. Rousseau_]
+
+XXII
+
+The most industrious man alive
+May yet be studious of his nails;
+What boots it with the age to strive?
+Custom the despot soon prevails.
+A new Kaverine Eugene mine,
+Dreading the world's remarks malign,
+Was that which we are wont to call
+A fop, in dress pedantical.
+Three mortal hours per diem he
+Would loiter by the looking-glass,
+And from his dressing-room would pass
+Like Venus when, capriciously,
+The goddess would a masquerade
+Attend in male attire arrayed.
+
+XXIII
+
+On this artistical retreat
+Having once fixed your interest,
+I might to connoisseurs repeat
+The style in which my hero dressed;
+Though I confess I hardly dare
+Describe in detail the affair,
+Since words like pantaloons, vest, coat,
+To Russ indigenous are not;
+And also that my feeble verse--
+Pardon I ask for such a sin--
+With words of foreign origin
+Too much I'm given to intersperse,
+Though to the Academy I come
+And oft its Dictionary thumb.(13)
+
+[Note 13: Refers to Dictionary of the Academy, compiled during the
+reign of Catherine II under the supervision of Lomonossoff.]
+
+XXIV
+
+But such is not my project now,
+So let us to the ball-room haste,
+Whither at headlong speed doth go
+Eugene in hackney carriage placed.
+Past darkened windows and long streets
+Of slumbering citizens he fleets,
+Till carriage lamps, a double row,
+Cast a gay lustre on the snow,
+Which shines with iridescent hues.
+He nears a spacious mansion's gate,
+By many a lamp illuminate,
+And through the lofty windows views
+Profiles of lovely dames he knows
+And also fashionable beaux.
+
+XXV
+
+Our hero stops and doth alight,
+Flies past the porter to the stair,
+But, ere he mounts the marble flight,
+With hurried hand smooths down his hair.
+He enters: in the hall a crowd,
+No more the music thunders loud,
+Some a mazurka occupies,
+Crushing and a confusing noise;
+Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash,
+The feet of graceful ladies fly,
+And following them ye might espy
+Full many a glance like lightning flash,
+And by the fiddle's rushing sound
+The voice of jealousy is drowned.
+
+XXVI
+
+In my young days of wild delight
+On balls I madly used to dote,
+Fond declarations they invite
+Or the delivery of a note.
+So hearken, every worthy spouse,
+I would your vigilance arouse,
+Attentive be unto my rhymes
+And due precautions take betimes.
+Ye mothers also, caution use,
+Upon your daughters keep an eye,
+Employ your glasses constantly,
+For otherwise--God only knows!
+I lift a warning voice because
+I long have ceased to offend the laws.
+
+XXVII
+
+Alas! life's hours which swiftly fly
+I've wasted in amusements vain,
+But were it not immoral I
+Should dearly like a dance again.
+I love its furious delight,
+The crowd and merriment and light,
+The ladies, their fantastic dress,
+Also their feet--yet ne'ertheless
+Scarcely in Russia can ye find
+Three pairs of handsome female feet;
+Ah! I still struggle to forget
+A pair; though desolate my mind,
+Their memory lingers still and seems
+To agitate me in my dreams.
+
+XXVIII
+
+When, where, and in what desert land,
+Madman, wilt thou from memory raze
+Those feet? Alas! on what far strand
+Do ye of spring the blossoms graze?
+Lapped in your Eastern luxury,
+No trace ye left in passing by
+Upon the dreary northern snows,
+But better loved the soft repose
+Of splendid carpets richly wrought.
+I once forgot for your sweet cause
+The thirst for fame and man's applause,
+My country and an exile's lot;
+My joy in youth was fleeting e'en
+As your light footprints on the green.
+
+XXIX
+
+Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks,
+Are admirable, my dear friend,
+But yet Terpsichore bespeaks
+Charms more enduring in the end.
+For promises her feet reveal
+Of untold gain she must conceal,
+Their privileged allurements fire
+A hidden train of wild desire.
+I love them, O my dear Elvine,(14)
+Beneath the table-cloth of white,
+In winter on the fender bright,
+In springtime on the meadows green,
+Upon the ball-room's glassy floor
+Or by the ocean's rocky shore.
+
+[Note 14: _Elvine_, or _Elvina_, was not improbably the owner of the
+seductive feet apostrophized by the poet, since, in 1816, he wrote
+an ode, "To Her," which commences thus:
+
+"Elvina, my dear, come, give me thine hand," and so forth.]
+
+XXX
+
+Beside the stormy sea one day
+I envied sore the billows tall,
+Which rushed in eager dense array
+Enamoured at her feet to fall.
+How like the billow I desired
+To kiss the feet which I admired!
+No, never in the early blaze
+Of fiery youth's untutored days
+So ardently did I desire
+A young Armida's lips to press,
+Her cheek of rosy loveliness
+Or bosom full of languid fire,--
+A gust of passion never tore
+My spirit with such pangs before.
+
+XXXI
+
+Another time, so willed it Fate,
+Immersed in secret thought I stand
+And grasp a stirrup fortunate--
+Her foot was in my other hand.
+Again imagination blazed,
+The contact of the foot I raised
+Rekindled in my withered heart
+The fires of passion and its smart--
+Away! and cease to ring their praise
+For ever with thy tattling lyre,
+The proud ones are not worth the fire
+Of passion they so often raise.
+The words and looks of charmers sweet
+Are oft deceptive--like their feet.
+
+XXXII
+
+Where is Oneguine? Half asleep,
+Straight from the ball to bed he goes,
+Whilst Petersburg from slumber deep
+The drum already doth arouse.
+The shopman and the pedlar rise
+And to the Bourse the cabman plies;
+The Okhtenka with pitcher speeds,(15)
+Crunching the morning snow she treads;
+Morning awakes with joyous sound;
+The shutters open; to the skies
+In column blue the smoke doth rise;
+The German baker looks around
+His shop, a night-cap on his head,
+And pauses oft to serve out bread.
+
+[Note 15: i.e. the milkmaid from the Okhta villages, a suburb of St.
+Petersburg on the right bank of the Neva chiefly inhabited by the
+labouring classes.]
+
+XXXIII
+
+But turning morning into night,
+Tired by the ball's incessant noise,
+The votary of vain delight
+Sleep in the shadowy couch enjoys,
+Late in the afternoon to rise,
+When the same life before him lies
+Till morn--life uniform but gay,
+To-morrow just like yesterday.
+But was our friend Eugene content,
+Free, in the blossom of his spring,
+Amidst successes flattering
+And pleasure's daily blandishment,
+Or vainly 'mid luxurious fare
+Was he in health and void of care?--
+
+XXXIV
+
+Even so! His passions soon abated,
+Hateful the hollow world became,
+Nor long his mind was agitated
+By love's inevitable flame.
+For treachery had done its worst;
+Friendship and friends he likewise curst,
+Because he could not gourmandise
+Daily beefsteaks and Strasbourg pies
+And irrigate them with champagne;
+Nor slander viciously could spread
+Whene'er he had an aching head;
+And, though a plucky scatterbrain,
+He finally lost all delight
+In bullets, sabres, and in fight.
+
+XXXV
+
+His malady, whose cause I ween
+It now to investigate is time,
+Was nothing but the British spleen
+Transported to our Russian clime.
+It gradually possessed his mind;
+Though, God be praised! he ne'er designed
+To slay himself with blade or ball,
+Indifferent he became to all,
+And like Childe Harold gloomily
+He to the festival repairs,
+Nor boston nor the world's affairs
+Nor tender glance nor amorous sigh
+Impressed him in the least degree,--
+Callous to all he seemed to be.
+
+XXXVI
+
+Ye miracles of courtly grace,
+He left _you_ first, and I must own
+The manners of the highest class
+Have latterly vexatious grown;
+And though perchance a lady may
+Discourse of Bentham or of Say,
+Yet as a rule their talk I call
+Harmless, but quite nonsensical.
+Then they're so innocent of vice,
+So full of piety, correct,
+So prudent, and so circumspect
+Stately, devoid of prejudice,
+So inaccessible to men,
+Their looks alone produce the spleen.(16)
+
+[Note 16: Apropos of this somewhat ungallant sentiment, a Russian
+scholiast remarks:--"The whole of this ironical stanza is but a
+_refined eulogy_ of the excellent qualities of our countrywomen.
+Thus Boileau, in the guise of invective, eulogizes Louis XIV.
+Russian ladies unite in their persons great acquirements,
+combined with amiability and strict morality; also a species of
+Oriental charm which so much captivated Madame de Stael." It will
+occur to most that the apologist of the Russian fair "doth
+protest too much." The poet in all probability wrote the offending
+stanza in a fit of Byronic "spleen," as he would most likely
+himself have called it. Indeed, since Byron, poets of his school
+seem to assume this virtue if they have it not, and we take their
+utterances under its influence for what they are worth.]
+
+XXXVII
+
+And you, my youthful damsels fair,
+Whom latterly one often meets
+Urging your droshkies swift as air
+Along Saint Petersburg's paved streets,
+From you too Eugene took to flight,
+Abandoning insane delight,
+And isolated from all men,
+Yawning betook him to a pen.
+He thought to write, but labour long
+Inspired him with disgust and so
+Nought from his pen did ever flow,
+And thus he never fell among
+That vicious set whom I don't blame--
+Because a member I became.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+Once more to idleness consigned,
+He felt the laudable desire
+From mere vacuity of mind
+The wit of others to acquire.
+A case of books he doth obtain--
+He reads at random, reads in vain.
+This nonsense, that dishonest seems,
+This wicked, that absurd he deems,
+All are constrained and fetters bear,
+Antiquity no pleasure gave,
+The moderns of the ancients rave--
+Books he abandoned like the fair,
+His book-shelf instantly doth drape
+With taffety instead of crape.
+
+XXXIX
+
+Having abjured the haunts of men,
+Like him renouncing vanity,
+His friendship I acquired just then;
+His character attracted me.
+An innate love of meditation,
+Original imagination,
+And cool sagacious mind he had:
+I was incensed and he was sad.
+Both were of passion satiate
+And both of dull existence tired,
+Extinct the flame which once had fired;
+Both were expectant of the hate
+With which blind Fortune oft betrays
+The very morning of our days.
+
+XL
+
+He who hath lived and living, thinks,
+Must e'en despise his kind at last;
+He who hath suffered ofttimes shrinks
+From shades of the relentless past.
+No fond illusions live to soothe,
+But memory like a serpent's tooth
+With late repentance gnaws and stings.
+All this in many cases brings
+A charm with it in conversation.
+Oneguine's speeches I abhorred
+At first, but soon became inured
+To the sarcastic observation,
+To witticisms and taunts half-vicious
+And gloomy epigrams malicious.
+
+XLI
+
+How oft, when on a summer night
+Transparent o'er the Neva beamed
+The firmament in mellow light,
+And when the watery mirror gleamed
+No more with pale Diana's rays,(17)
+We called to mind our youthful days--
+The days of love and of romance!
+Then would we muse as in a trance,
+Impressionable for an hour,
+And breathe the balmy breath of night;
+And like the prisoner's our delight
+Who for the greenwood quits his tower,
+As on the rapid wings of thought
+The early days of life we sought.
+
+[Note 17: The midsummer nights in the latitude of St. Petersburg
+are a prolonged twilight.]
+
+XLII
+
+Absorbed in melancholy mood
+And o'er the granite coping bent,
+Oneguine meditative stood,
+E'en as the poet says he leant.(18)
+'Tis silent all! Alone the cries
+Of the night sentinels arise
+And from the Millionaya afar(19)
+The sudden rattling of a car.
+Lo! on the sleeping river borne,
+A boat with splashing oar floats by,
+And now we hear delightedly
+A jolly song and distant horn;
+But sweeter in a midnight dream
+Torquato Tasso's strains I deem.
+
+[Note 18: Refers to Mouravieff's "Goddess of the Neva." At St.
+Petersburg the banks of the Neva are lined throughout with
+splendid granite quays.]
+
+[Note 19:
+A street running parallel to the Neva, and leading from
+the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace and Garden.]
+
+XLIII
+
+Ye billows of blue Hadria's sea,
+O Brenta, once more we shall meet
+And, inspiration firing me,
+Your magic voices I shall greet,
+Whose tones Apollo's sons inspire,
+And after Albion's proud lyre (20)
+Possess my love and sympathy.
+The nights of golden Italy
+I'll pass beneath the firmament,
+Hid in the gondola's dark shade,
+Alone with my Venetian maid,
+Now talkative, now reticent;
+From her my lips shall learn the tongue
+Of love which whilom Petrarch sung.
+
+[Note 20: The strong influence exercised by Byron's genius on the
+imagination of Pushkin is well known. Shakespeare and other
+English dramatists had also their share in influencing his mind,
+which, at all events in its earlier developments, was of an
+essentially imitative type. As an example of his Shakespearian
+tastes, see his poem of "Angelo," founded upon "Measure for Measure."]
+
+XLIV
+
+When will my hour of freedom come!
+Time, I invoke thee! favouring gales
+Awaiting on the shore I roam
+And beckon to the passing sails.
+Upon the highway of the sea
+When shall I wing my passage free
+On waves by tempests curdled o'er!
+'Tis time to quit this weary shore
+So uncongenial to my mind,
+To dream upon the sunny strand
+Of Africa, ancestral land,(21)
+Of dreary Russia left behind,
+Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,
+Wherein I buried left my heart.
+
+[Note 21: The poet was, on his mother's side, of African extraction,
+a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of
+his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal,
+was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a
+corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian
+Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused
+him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's
+brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg
+for the purpose of ransoming him; but Peter would not surrender his
+godson who died at the age of ninety-two, having attained the rank
+of general in the Russian service.]
+
+XLV
+
+Eugene designed with me to start
+And visit many a foreign clime,
+But Fortune cast our lots apart
+For a protracted space of time.
+Just at that time his father died,
+And soon Oneguine's door beside
+Of creditors a hungry rout
+Their claims and explanations shout.
+But Eugene, hating litigation
+And with his lot in life content,
+To a surrender gave consent,
+Seeing in this no deprivation,
+Or counting on his uncle's death
+And what the old man might bequeath.
+
+XLVI
+
+And in reality one day
+The steward sent a note to tell
+How sick to death his uncle lay
+And wished to say to him farewell.
+Having this mournful document
+Perused, Eugene in postchaise went
+And hastened to his uncle's side,
+But in his heart dissatisfied,
+Having for money's sake alone
+Sorrow to counterfeit and wail--
+Thus we began our little tale--
+But, to his uncle's mansion flown,
+He found him on the table laid,
+A due which must to earth be paid.
+
+XLVII
+
+The courtyard full of serfs he sees,
+And from the country all around
+Had come both friends and enemies--
+Funeral amateurs abound!
+The body they consigned to rest,
+And then made merry pope and guest,
+With serious air then went away
+As men who much had done that day.
+Lo! my Oneguine rural lord!
+Of mines and meadows, woods and lakes,
+He now a full possession takes,
+He who economy abhorred,
+Delighted much his former ways
+To vary for a few brief days.
+
+XLVIII
+
+For two whole days it seemed a change
+To wander through the meadows still,
+The cool dark oaken grove to range,
+To listen to the rippling rill.
+But on the third of grove and mead
+He took no more the slightest heed;
+They made him feel inclined to doze;
+And the conviction soon arose,
+Ennui can in the country dwell
+Though without palaces and streets,
+Cards, balls, routs, poetry or fetes;
+On him spleen mounted sentinel
+And like his shadow dogged his life,
+Or better,--like a faithful wife.
+
+XLIX
+
+I was for calm existence made,
+For rural solitude and dreams,
+My lyre sings sweeter in the shade
+And more imagination teems.
+On innocent delights I dote,
+Upon my lake I love to float,
+For law I _far niente_ take
+And every morning I awake
+The child of sloth and liberty.
+I slumber much, a little read,
+Of fleeting glory take no heed.
+In former years thus did not I
+In idleness and tranquil joy
+The happiest days of life employ?
+
+L
+
+Love, flowers, the country, idleness
+And fields my joys have ever been;
+I like the difference to express
+Between myself and my Eugene,
+Lest the malicious reader or
+Some one or other editor
+Of keen sarcastic intellect
+Herein my portrait should detect,
+And impiously should declare,
+To sketch myself that I have tried
+Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride,
+As if impossible it were
+To write of any other elf
+Than one's own fascinating self.
+
+LI
+
+Here I remark all poets are
+Love to idealize inclined;
+I have dreamed many a vision fair
+And the recesses of my mind
+Retained the image, though short-lived,
+Which afterwards the muse revived.
+Thus carelessly I once portrayed
+Mine own ideal, the mountain maid,
+The captives of the Salguir's shore.(22)
+But now a question in this wise
+Oft upon friendly lips doth rise:
+Whom doth thy plaintive Muse adore?
+To whom amongst the jealous throng
+Of maids dost thou inscribe thy song?
+
+[Note 22: Refers to two of the most interesting productions of
+the poet. The former line indicates the _Prisoner of the
+Caucasus_, the latter, _The Fountain of Baktchiserai_. The
+Salguir is a river of the Crimea.]
+
+LII
+
+Whose glance reflecting inspiration
+With tenderness hath recognized
+Thy meditative incantation--
+Whom hath thy strain immortalized?
+None, be my witness Heaven above!
+The malady of hopeless love
+I have endured without respite.
+Happy who thereto can unite
+Poetic transport. They impart
+A double force unto their song
+Who following Petrarch move along
+And ease the tortures of the heart--
+Perchance they laurels also cull--
+But I, in love, was mute and dull.
+
+LIII
+
+The Muse appeared, when love passed by
+And my dark soul to light was brought;
+Free, I renewed the idolatry
+Of harmony enshrining thought.
+I write, and anguish flies away,
+Nor doth my absent pen portray
+Around my stanzas incomplete
+Young ladies' faces and their feet.
+Extinguished ashes do not blaze--
+I mourn, but tears I cannot shed--
+Soon, of the tempest which hath fled
+Time will the ravages efface--
+When that time comes, a poem I'll strive
+To write in cantos twenty-five.
+
+LIV
+
+I've thought well o'er the general plan,
+The hero's name too in advance,
+Meantime I'll finish whilst I can
+Canto the First of this romance.
+I've scanned it with a jealous eye,
+Discovered much absurdity,
+But will not modify a tittle--
+I owe the censorship a little.
+For journalistic deglutition
+I yield the fruit of work severe.
+Go, on the Neva's bank appear,
+My very latest composition!
+Enjoy the meed which Fame bestows--
+Misunderstanding, words and blows.
+
+
+END OF CANTO THE FIRST
+
+
+
+CANTO THE SECOND
+
+The Poet
+
+"O Rus!"--Horace
+
+Canto The Second
+
+[Note: Odessa, December 1823.]
+
+I
+
+The village wherein yawned Eugene
+Was a delightful little spot,
+There friends of pure delight had been
+Grateful to Heaven for their lot.
+The lonely mansion-house to screen
+From gales a hill behind was seen;
+Before it ran a stream. Behold!
+Afar, where clothed in green and gold
+Meadows and cornfields are displayed,
+Villages in the distance show
+And herds of oxen wandering low;
+Whilst nearer, sunk in deeper shade,
+A thick immense neglected grove
+Extended--haunt which Dryads love.
+
+II
+
+'Twas built, the venerable pile,
+As lordly mansions ought to be,
+In solid, unpretentious style,
+The style of wise antiquity.
+Lofty the chambers one and all,
+Silk tapestry upon the wall,
+Imperial portraits hang around
+And stoves of various shapes abound.
+All this I know is out of date,
+I cannot tell the reason why,
+But Eugene, incontestably,
+The matter did not agitate,
+Because he yawned at the bare view
+Of drawing-rooms or old or new.
+
+III
+
+He took the room wherein the old
+Man--forty years long in this wise--
+His housekeeper was wont to scold,
+Look through the window and kill flies.
+'Twas plain--an oaken floor ye scan,
+Two cupboards, table, soft divan,
+And not a speck of dirt descried.
+Oneguine oped the cupboards wide.
+In one he doth accounts behold,
+Here bottles stand in close array,
+There jars of cider block the way,
+An almanac but eight years old.
+His uncle, busy man indeed,
+No other book had time to read.
+
+IV
+
+Alone amid possessions great,
+Eugene at first began to dream,
+If but to lighten Time's dull rate,
+Of many an economic scheme;
+This anchorite amid his waste
+The ancient _barshtchina_ replaced
+By an _obrok's_ indulgent rate:(23)
+The peasant blessed his happy fate.
+But this a heinous crime appeared
+Unto his neighbour, man of thrift,
+Who secretly denounced the gift,
+And many another slily sneered;
+And all with one accord agreed,
+He was a dangerous fool indeed.
+
+[Note 23: The _barshtchina_ was the corvee, or forced labour
+of three days per week rendered previous to the emancipation
+of 1861 by the serfs to their lord.
+
+The _obrok_ was a species of poll-tax paid by a serf, either
+in lieu of the forced labour or in consideration of being
+permitted to exercise a trade or profession elsewhere. Very
+heavy obroks have at times been levied on serfs possessed of
+skill or accomplishments, or who had amassed wealth; and
+circumstances may be easily imagined which, under such a
+system, might lead to great abuses.]
+
+V
+
+All visited him at first, of course;
+But since to the backdoor they led
+Most usually a Cossack horse
+Upon the Don's broad pastures bred
+If they but heard domestic loads
+Come rumbling up the neighbouring roads,
+Most by this circumstance offended
+All overtures of friendship ended.
+"Oh! what a fool our neighbour is!
+He's a freemason, so we think.
+Alone he doth his claret drink,
+A lady's hand doth never kiss.
+'Tis _yes! no!_ never _madam! sir!_"(24)
+This was his social character.
+
+[Note 24: The neighbours complained of Oneguine's want of courtesy.
+He always replied "da" or "nyet," yes or no, instead of "das"
+or "nyets"--the final s being a contraction of "sudar" or
+"sudarinia," i.e. sir or madam.]
+
+VI
+
+Into the district then to boot
+A new proprietor arrived,
+From whose analysis minute
+The neighbourhood fresh sport derived.
+Vladimir Lenski was his name,
+From Gottingen inspired he came,
+A worshipper of Kant, a bard,
+A young and handsome galliard.
+He brought from mystic Germany
+The fruits of learning and combined
+A fiery and eccentric mind,
+Idolatry of liberty,
+A wild enthusiastic tongue,
+Black curls which to his shoulders hung.
+
+VII
+
+The pervert world with icy chill
+Had not yet withered his young breast.
+His heart reciprocated still
+When Friendship smiled or Love caressed.
+He was a dear delightful fool--
+A nursling yet for Hope to school.
+The riot of the world and glare
+Still sovereigns of his spirit were,
+And by a sweet delusion he
+Would soothe the doubtings of his soul,
+He deemed of human life the goal
+To be a charming mystery:
+He racked his brains to find its clue
+And marvels deemed he thus should view.
+
+VIII
+
+This he believed: a kindred spirit
+Impelled to union with his own
+Lay languishing both day and night--
+Waiting his coming--his alone!
+He deemed his friends but longed to make
+Great sacrifices for his sake!
+That a friend's arm in every case
+Felled a calumniator base!
+That chosen heroes consecrate,
+Friends of the sons of every land,
+Exist--that their immortal band
+Shall surely, be it soon or late,
+Pour on this orb a dazzling light
+And bless mankind with full delight.
+
+IX
+
+Compassion now or wrath inspires
+And now philanthropy his soul,
+And now his youthful heart desires
+The path which leads to glory's goal.
+His harp beneath that sky had rung
+Where sometime Goethe, Schiller sung,
+And at the altar of their fame
+He kindled his poetic flame.
+But from the Muses' loftiest height
+The gifted songster never swerved,
+But proudly in his song preserved
+An ever transcendental flight;
+His transports were quite maidenly,
+Charming with grave simplicity.
+
+X
+
+He sang of love--to love a slave.
+His ditties were as pure and bright
+As thoughts which gentle maidens have,
+As a babe's slumber, or the light
+Of the moon in the tranquil skies,
+Goddess of lovers' tender sighs.
+He sang of separation grim,
+Of what not, and of distant dim,
+Of roses to romancers dear;
+To foreign lands he would allude,
+Where long time he in solitude
+Had let fall many a bitter tear:
+He sang of life's fresh colours stained
+Before he eighteen years attained.
+
+XI
+
+Since Eugene in that solitude
+Gifts such as these alone could prize,
+A scant attendance Lenski showed
+At neighbouring hospitalities.
+He shunned those parties boisterous;
+The conversation tedious
+About the crop of hay, the wine,
+The kennel or a kindred line,
+Was certainly not erudite
+Nor sparkled with poetic fire,
+Nor wit, nor did the same inspire
+A sense of social delight,
+But still more stupid did appear
+The gossip of their ladies fair.
+
+XII
+
+Handsome and rich, the neighbourhood
+Lenski as a good match received,--
+Such is the country custom good;
+All mothers their sweet girls believed
+Suitable for this semi-Russian.
+He enters: rapidly discussion
+Shifts, tacks about, until they prate
+The sorrows of a single state.
+Perchance where Dunia pours out tea
+The young proprietor we find;
+To Dunia then they whisper: Mind!
+And a guitar produced we see,
+And Heavens! warbled forth we hear:
+_Come to my golden palace, dear_!(25)
+
+[Note 25: From the lay of the _Russalka_, i.e. mermaid of the Dnieper.]
+
+XIII
+
+But Lenski, having no desire
+Vows matrimonial to break,
+With our Oneguine doth aspire
+Acquaintance instantly to make.
+They met. Earth, water, prose and verse,
+Or ice and flame, are not diverse
+If they were similar in aught.
+At first such contradictions wrought
+Mutual repulsion and ennui,
+But grown familiar side by side
+On horseback every day they ride--
+Inseparable soon they be.
+Thus oft--this I myself confess--
+Men become friends from idleness.
+
+XIV
+
+But even thus not now-a-days!
+In spite of common sense we're wont
+As cyphers others to appraise,
+Ourselves as unities to count;
+And like Napoleons each of us
+A million bipeds reckons thus
+One instrument for his own use--
+Feeling is silly, dangerous.
+Eugene, more tolerant than this
+(Though certainly mankind he knew
+And usually despised it too),
+Exceptionless as no rule is,
+A few of different temper deemed,
+Feeling in others much esteemed.
+
+XV
+
+With smiling face he Lenski hears;
+The poet's fervid conversation
+And judgment which unsteady veers
+And eye which gleams with inspiration--
+All this was novel to Eugene.
+The cold reply with gloomy mien
+He oft upon his lips would curb,
+Thinking: 'tis foolish to disturb
+This evanescent boyish bliss.
+Time without me will lessons give,
+So meantime let him joyous live
+And deem the world perfection is!
+Forgive the fever youth inspires,
+And youthful madness, youthful fires.
+
+XVI
+
+The gulf between them was so vast,
+Debate commanded ample food--
+The laws of generations past,
+The fruits of science, evil, good,
+The prejudices all men have,
+The fatal secrets of the grave,
+And life and fate in turn selected
+Were to analysis subjected.
+The fervid poet would recite,
+Carried away by ecstasy,
+Fragments of northern poetry,
+Whilst Eugene condescending quite,
+Though scarcely following what was said,
+Attentive listened to the lad.
+
+XVII
+
+But more the passions occupy
+The converse of our hermits twain,
+And, heaving a regretful sigh,
+An exile from their troublous reign,
+Eugene would speak regarding these.
+Thrice happy who their agonies
+Hath suffered but indifferent grown,
+Still happier he who ne'er hath known!
+By absence who hath chilled his love,
+His hate by slander, and who spends
+Existence without wife or friends,
+Whom jealous transport cannot move,
+And who the rent-roll of his race
+Ne'er trusted to the treacherous ace.
+
+XVIII
+
+When, wise at length, we seek repose
+Beneath the flag of Quietude,
+When Passion's fire no longer glows
+And when her violence reviewed--
+Each gust of temper, silly word,
+Seems so unnatural and absurd:
+Reduced with effort unto sense,
+We hear with interest intense
+The accents wild of other's woes,
+They stir the heart as heretofore.
+So ancient warriors, battles o'er,
+A curious interest disclose
+In yarns of youthful troopers gay,
+Lost in the hamlet far away.
+
+XIX
+
+And in addition youth is flame
+And cannot anything conceal,
+Is ever ready to proclaim
+The love, hate, sorrow, joy, we feel.
+Deeming himself a veteran scarred
+In love's campaigns Oneguine heard
+With quite a lachrymose expression
+The youthful poet's fond confession.
+He with an innocence extreme
+His inner consciousness laid bare,
+And Eugene soon discovered there
+The story of his young love's dream,
+Where plentifully feelings flow
+Which we experienced long ago.
+
+XX
+
+Alas! he loved as in our times
+Men love no more, as only the
+Mad spirit of the man who rhymes
+Is still condemned in love to be;
+One image occupied his mind,
+Constant affection intertwined
+And an habitual sense of pain;
+And distance interposed in vain,
+Nor years of separation all
+Nor homage which the Muse demands
+Nor beauties of far distant lands
+Nor study, banquet, rout nor ball
+His constant soul could ever tire,
+Which glowed with virginal desire.
+
+XXI
+
+When but a boy he Olga loved
+Unknown as yet the aching heart,
+He witnessed tenderly and moved
+Her girlish gaiety and sport.
+Beneath the sheltering oak tree's shade
+He with his little maiden played,
+Whilst the fond parents, friends thro' life,
+Dreamed in the future man and wife.
+And full of innocent delight,
+As in a thicket's humble shade,
+Beneath her parents' eyes the maid
+Grew like a lily pure and white,
+Unseen in thick and tangled grass
+By bee and butterfly which pass.
+
+XXII
+
+'Twas she who first within his breast
+Poetic transport did infuse,
+And thoughts of Olga first impressed
+A mournful temper on his Muse.
+Farewell! thou golden days of love!
+'Twas then he loved the tangled grove
+And solitude and calm delight,
+The moon, the stars, and shining night--
+The moon, the lamp of heaven above,
+To whom we used to consecrate
+A promenade in twilight late
+With tears which secret sufferers love--
+But now in her effulgence pale
+A substitute for lamps we hail!
+
+XXIII
+
+Obedient she had ever been
+And modest, cheerful as the morn,
+As a poetic life serene,
+Sweet as the kiss of lovers sworn.
+Her eyes were of cerulean blue,
+Her locks were of a golden hue,
+Her movements, voice and figure slight,
+All about Olga--to a light
+Romance of love I pray refer,
+You'll find her portrait there, I vouch;
+I formerly admired her much
+But finally grew bored by her.
+But with her elder sister I
+Must now my stanzas occupy.
+
+XXIV
+
+Tattiana was her appellation.
+We are the first who such a name
+In pages of a love narration
+With such a perversity proclaim.
+But wherefore not?--'Tis pleasant, nice,
+Euphonious, though I know a spice
+It carries of antiquity
+And of the attic. Honestly,
+We must admit but little taste
+Doth in us or our names appear(26)
+(I speak not of our poems here),
+And education runs to waste,
+Endowing us from out her store
+With affectation,--nothing more.
+
+[Note 26: The Russian annotator remarks: "The most euphonious
+Greek names, e.g. Agathon, Philotas, Theodora, Thekla, etc.,
+are used amongst us by the lower classes only."]
+
+XXV
+
+And so Tattiana was her name,
+Nor by her sister's brilliancy
+Nor by her beauty she became
+The cynosure of every eye.
+Shy, silent did the maid appear
+As in the timid forest deer,
+Even beneath her parents' roof
+Stood as estranged from all aloof,
+Nearest and dearest knew not how
+To fawn upon and love express;
+A child devoid of childishness
+To romp and play she ne'er would go:
+Oft staring through the window pane
+Would she in silence long remain.
+
+XXVI
+
+Contemplativeness, her delight,
+E'en from her cradle's earliest dream,
+Adorned with many a vision bright
+Of rural life the sluggish stream;
+Ne'er touched her fingers indolent
+The needle nor, o'er framework bent,
+Would she the canvas tight enrich
+With gay design and silken stitch.
+Desire to rule ye may observe
+When the obedient doll in sport
+An infant maiden doth exhort
+Polite demeanour to preserve,
+Gravely repeating to another
+Recent instructions of its mother.
+
+XXVII
+
+But Tania ne'er displayed a passion
+For dolls, e'en from her earliest years,
+And gossip of the town and fashion
+She ne'er repeated unto hers.
+Strange unto her each childish game,
+But when the winter season came
+And dark and drear the evenings were,
+Terrible tales she loved to hear.
+And when for Olga nurse arrayed
+In the broad meadow a gay rout,
+All the young people round about,
+At prisoner's base she never played.
+Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed,
+Their giddy sports she ne'er enjoyed.
+
+XXVIII
+
+She loved upon the balcony
+To anticipate the break of day,
+When on the pallid eastern sky
+The starry beacons fade away,
+The horizon luminous doth grow,
+Morning's forerunners, breezes blow
+And gradually day unfolds.
+In winter, when Night longer holds
+A hemisphere beneath her sway,
+Longer the East inert reclines
+Beneath the moon which dimly shines,
+And calmly sleeps the hours away,
+At the same hour she oped her eyes
+And would by candlelight arise.
+
+XXIX
+
+Romances pleased her from the first,
+Her all in all did constitute;
+In love adventures she was versed,
+Rousseau and Richardson to boot.
+Not a bad fellow was her father
+Though superannuated rather;
+In books he saw nought to condemn
+But, as he never opened them,
+Viewed them with not a little scorn,
+And gave himself but little pain
+His daughter's book to ascertain
+Which 'neath her pillow lay till morn.
+His wife was also mad upon
+The works of Mr. Richardson.
+
+XXX
+
+She was thus fond of Richardson
+Not that she had his works perused,
+Or that adoring Grandison
+That rascal Lovelace she abused;
+But that Princess Pauline of old,
+Her Moscow cousin, often told
+The tale of these romantic men;
+Her husband was a bridegroom then,
+And she despite herself would waste
+Sighs on another than her lord
+Whose qualities appeared to afford
+More satisfaction to her taste.
+Her Grandison was in the Guard,
+A noted fop who gambled hard.
+
+XXXI
+
+Like his, her dress was always nice,
+The height of fashion, fitting tight,
+But contrary to her advice
+The girl in marriage they unite.
+Then, her distraction to allay,
+The bridegroom sage without delay
+Removed her to his country seat,
+Where God alone knows whom she met.
+She struggled hard at first thus pent,
+Night separated from her spouse,
+Then became busy with the house,
+First reconciled and then content;
+Habit was given us in distress
+By Heaven in lieu of happiness.
+
+XXXII
+
+Habit alleviates the grief
+Inseparable from our lot;
+This great discovery relief
+And consolation soon begot.
+And then she soon 'twixt work and leisure
+Found out the secret how at pleasure
+To dominate her worthy lord,
+And harmony was soon restored.
+The workpeople she superintended,
+Mushrooms for winter salted down,
+Kept the accounts, shaved many a crown,(*)
+The bath on Saturdays attended,
+When angry beat her maids, I grieve,
+And all without her husband's leave.
+
+[Note: The serfs destined for military service used to have
+a portion of their heads shaved as a distinctive mark.]
+
+XXXIII
+
+In her friends' albums, time had been,
+With blood instead of ink she scrawled,
+Baptized Prascovia Pauline,
+And in her conversation drawled.
+She wore her corset tightly bound,
+The Russian N with nasal sound
+She would pronounce _a la Francaise_;
+But soon she altered all her ways,
+Corset and album and Pauline,
+Her sentimental verses all,
+She soon forgot, began to call
+Akulka who was once Celine,
+And had with waddling in the end
+Her caps and night-dresses to mend.
+
+XXXIV
+
+As for her spouse he loved her dearly,
+In her affairs ne'er interfered,
+Entrusted all to her sincerely,
+In dressing-gown at meals appeared.
+Existence calmly sped along,
+And oft at eventide a throng
+Of friends unceremonious would
+Assemble from the neighbourhood:
+They growl a bit--they scandalise--
+They crack a feeble joke and smile--
+Thus the time passes and meanwhile
+Olga the tea must supervise--
+'Tis time for supper, now for bed,
+And soon the friendly troop hath fled.
+
+XXXV
+
+They in a peaceful life preserved
+Customs by ages sanctified,
+Strictly the Carnival observed,
+Ate Russian pancakes at Shrovetide,
+Twice in the year to fast were bound,
+Of whirligigs were very fond,
+Of Christmas carols, song and dance;
+When people with long countenance
+On Trinity Sunday yawned at prayer,
+Three tears they dropt with humble mein
+Upon a bunch of lovage green;
+_Kvass_ needful was to them as air;
+On guests their servants used to wait
+By rank as settled by the State.(27)
+
+[Note 27: The foregoing stanza requires explanation. Russian
+pancakes or "blinni" are consumed vigorously by the lower
+orders during the Carnival. At other times it is difficult
+to procure them, at any rate in the large towns.
+
+The Russian peasants are childishly fond of whirligigs, which
+are also much in vogue during the Carnival.
+
+"Christmas Carols" is not an exact equivalent for the Russian
+phrase. "Podbliudni pessni," are literally "dish songs," or
+songs used with dishes (of water) during the "sviatki" or Holy
+Nights, which extend from Christmas to Twelfth Night, for
+purposes of divination. Reference will again be made to this
+superstitious practice, which is not confined to Russia. See Note 52.
+
+"Song and dance," the well-known "khorovod," in which the dance
+proceeds to vocal music.
+
+"Lovage," the _Levisticum officinalis_, is a hardy plant growing
+very far north, though an inhabitant of our own kitchen gardens.
+The passage containing the reference to the three tears and
+Trinity Sunday was at first deemed irreligious by the Russian
+censors, and consequently expunged.
+
+_Kvass_ is of various sorts: there is the common _kvass_ of
+fermented rye used by the peasantry, and the more expensive
+_kvass_ of the restaurants, iced and flavoured with various fruits.
+
+The final two lines refer to the "Tchin," or Russian social
+hierarchy. There are fourteen grades in the Tchin assigning
+relative rank and precedence to the members of the various
+departments of the State, civil, military, naval, court,
+scientific and educational. The military and naval grades from
+the 14th up to the 7th confer personal nobility only, whilst
+above the 7th hereditary rank is acquired. In the remaining
+departments, civil or otherwise, personal nobility is only
+attained with the 9th grade, hereditary with the 4th.]
+
+XXXVI
+
+Thus age approached, the common doom,
+And death before the husband wide
+Opened the portals of the tomb
+And a new diadem supplied.(28)
+Just before dinner-time he slept,
+By neighbouring families bewept,
+By children and by faithful wife
+With deeper woe than others' grief.
+He was an honest gentleman,
+And where at last his bones repose
+The epitaph on marble shows:
+_Demetrius Larine, sinful man,
+Servant of God and brigadier,
+Enjoyeth peaceful slumber here_.
+
+[Note 28: A play upon the word "venetz," crown, which also
+signifies a nimbus or glory, and is the symbol of marriage
+from the fact of two gilt crowns being held over the heads
+of the bride and bridegroom during the ceremony. The literal
+meaning of the passage is therefore: his earthly marriage
+was dissolved and a heavenly one was contracted.]
+
+XXXVII
+
+To his Penates now returned,
+Vladimir Lenski visited
+His neighbour's lowly tomb and mourned
+Above the ashes of the dead.
+There long time sad at heart he stayed:
+"Poor Yorick," mournfully he said,
+"How often in thine arms I lay;
+How with thy medal I would play,
+The Medal Otchakoff conferred!(29)
+To me he would his Olga give,
+Would whisper: shall I so long live?"--
+And by a genuine sorrow stirred,
+Lenski his pencil-case took out
+And an elegiac poem wrote.
+
+[Note 29: The fortress of Otchakoff was taken by storm on the
+18th December 1788 by a Russian army under Prince Potemkin.
+Thirty thousand Turks are said to have perished during the
+assault and ensuing massacre.]
+
+XXXVIII
+
+Likewise an epitaph with tears
+He writes upon his parents' tomb,
+And thus ancestral dust reveres.
+Oh! on the fields of life how bloom
+Harvests of souls unceasingly
+By Providence's dark decree!
+They blossom, ripen and they fall
+And others rise ephemeral!
+Thus our light race grows up and lives,
+A moment effervescing stirs,
+Then seeks ancestral sepulchres,
+The appointed hour arrives, arrives!
+And our successors soon shall drive
+Us from the world wherein we live.
+
+XXXIX
+
+Meantime, drink deeply of the flow
+Of frivolous existence, friends;
+Its insignificance I know
+And care but little for its ends.
+To dreams I long have closed mine eyes,
+Yet sometimes banished hopes will rise
+And agitate my heart again;
+And thus it is 'twould cause me pain
+Without the faintest trace to leave
+This world. I do not praise desire,
+Yet still apparently aspire
+My mournful fate in verse to weave,
+That like a friendly voice its tone
+Rescue me from oblivion.
+
+XL
+
+Perchance some heart 'twill agitate,
+And then the stanzas of my theme
+Will not, preserved by kindly Fate,
+Perish absorbed by Lethe's stream.
+Then it may be, O flattering tale,
+Some future ignoramus shall
+My famous portrait indicate
+And cry: he was a poet great!
+My gratitude do not disdain,
+Admirer of the peaceful Muse,
+Whose memory doth not refuse
+My light productions to retain,
+Whose hands indulgently caress
+The bays of age and helplessness.
+
+
+End of Canto the Second.
+
+
+CANTO THE THIRD
+
+The Country Damsel
+
+'Elle etait fille, elle etait amoureuse'--Malfilatre
+
+Canto The Third
+
+[Note: Odessa and Mikhailovskoe, 1824.]
+
+I
+
+"Whither away? Deuce take the bard!"--
+"Good-bye, Oneguine, I must go."--
+"I won't detain you; but 'tis hard
+To guess how you the eve pull through."--
+"At Larina's."--"Hem, that is queer!
+Pray is it not a tough affair
+Thus to assassinate the eve?"--
+"Not at all."--"That I can't conceive!
+'Tis something of this sort I deem.
+In the first place, say, am I right?
+A Russian household simple quite,
+Who welcome guests with zeal extreme,
+Preserves and an eternal prattle
+About the rain and flax and cattle."--
+
+II
+
+"No misery I see in that"--
+"Boredom, my friend, behold the ill--"
+"Your fashionable world I hate,
+Domestic life attracts me still,
+Where--"--"What! another eclogue spin?
+For God's sake, Lenski, don't begin!
+What! really going? 'Tis too bad!
+But Lenski, I should be so glad
+Would you to me this Phyllis show,
+Fair source of every fine idea,
+Verses and tears et cetera.
+Present me."--"You are joking."--"No."--
+"Delighted."--"When?"--"This very night.
+They will receive us with delight."
+
+III
+
+Whilst homeward by the nearest route
+Our heroes at full gallop sped,
+Can we not stealthily make out
+What they in conversation said?--
+"How now, Oneguine, yawning still?"--
+"'Tis habit, Lenski."--"Is your ill
+More troublesome than usual?"--"No!
+How dark the night is getting though!
+Hallo, Andriushka, onward race!
+The drive becomes monotonous--
+Well! Larina appears to us
+An ancient lady full of grace.--
+That bilberry wine, I'm sore afraid,
+The deuce with my inside has played."
+
+IV
+
+"Say, of the two which was Tattiana?"
+"She who with melancholy face
+And silent as the maid Svetlana(30)
+Hard by the window took her place."--
+"The younger, you're in love with her!"
+"Well!"--"I the elder should prefer,
+Were I like you a bard by trade--
+In Olga's face no life's displayed.
+'Tis a Madonna of Vandyk,
+An oval countenance and pink,
+Yon silly moon upon the brink
+Of the horizon she is like!"--
+Vladimir something curtly said
+Nor further comment that night made.
+
+[Note 30: "Svetlana," a short poem by Joukovski, upon which his
+fame mainly rests. Joukovski was an unblushing plagiarist. Many
+eminent English poets have been laid under contribution by him,
+often without going through the form of acknowledging the
+source of inspiration. Even the poem in question cannot be
+pronounced entirely original, though its intrinsic beauty is
+unquestionable. It undoubtedly owes its origin to Burger's poem
+"Leonora," which has found so many English translators. Not
+content with a single development of Burger's ghastly production
+the Russian poet has directly paraphrased "Leonora" under its
+own title, and also written a poem "Liudmila" in imitation of it.
+The principal outlines of these three poems are as follows: A
+maiden loses her lover in the wars; she murmurs at Providence
+and is vainly reproved for such blasphemy by her mother.
+Providence at length loses patience and sends her lover's spirit,
+to all appearances as if in the flesh, who induces the unfortunate
+maiden to elope. Instead of riding to a church or bridal chamber
+the unpleasant bridegroom resorts to the graveyard and repairs to
+his own grave, from which he has recently issued to execute his
+errand. It is a repulsive subject. "Svetlana," however, is more
+agreeable than its prototype "Leonora," inasmuch as the whole
+catastrophe turns out a dream brought on by "sorcery," during the
+"sviatki" or Holy Nights (see Canto V. st. x), and the dreamer
+awakes to hear the tinkling of her lover's sledge approaching.
+"Svetlana" has been translated by Sir John Bowring.]
+
+V
+
+Meantime Oneguine's apparition
+At Larina's abode produced
+Quite a sensation; the position
+To all good neighbours' sport conduced.
+Endless conjectures all propound
+And secretly their views expound.
+What jokes and guesses now abound,
+A beau is for Tattiana found!
+In fact, some people were assured
+The wedding-day had been arranged,
+But the date subsequently changed
+Till proper rings could be procured.
+On Lenski's matrimonial fate
+They long ago had held debate.
+
+VI
+
+Of course Tattiana was annoyed
+By such allusions scandalous,
+Yet was her inmost soul o'erjoyed
+With satisfaction marvellous,
+As in her heart the thought sank home,
+I am in love, my hour hath come!
+Thus in the earth the seed expands
+Obedient to warm Spring's commands.
+Long time her young imagination
+By indolence and languor fired
+The fated nutriment desired;
+And long internal agitation
+Had filled her youthful breast with gloom,
+She waited for--I don't know whom!
+
+VII
+
+The fatal hour had come at last--
+She oped her eyes and cried: 'tis he!
+Alas! for now before her passed
+The same warm vision constantly;
+Now all things round about repeat
+Ceaselessly to the maiden sweet
+His name: the tenderness of home
+Tiresome unto her hath become
+And the kind-hearted servitors:
+Immersed in melancholy thought,
+She hears of conversation nought
+And hated casual visitors,
+Their coming which no man expects,
+And stay whose length none recollects.
+
+VIII
+
+Now with what eager interest
+She the delicious novel reads,
+With what avidity and zest
+She drinks in those seductive deeds!
+All the creations which below
+From happy inspiration flow,
+The swain of Julia Wolmar,
+Malek Adel and De Linar,(31)
+Werther, rebellious martyr bold,
+And that unrivalled paragon,
+The sleep-compelling Grandison,
+Our tender dreamer had enrolled
+A single being: 'twas in fine
+No other than Oneguine mine.
+
+[Note 31: The heroes of two romances much in vogue in Pushkin's
+time: the former by Madame Cottin, the latter by the famous
+Madame Krudener. The frequent mention in the course of this
+poem of romances once enjoying a European celebrity but now
+consigned to oblivion, will impress the reader with the
+transitory nature of merely mediocre literary reputation. One
+has now to search for the very names of most of the popular
+authors of Pushkin's day and rummage biographical dictionaries
+for the dates of their births and deaths. Yet the poet's prime
+was but fifty years ago, and had he lived to a ripe old age he
+would have been amongst us still. He was four years younger
+than the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle. The decadence of Richardson's
+popularity amongst his countrymen is a fact familiar to all.]
+
+IX
+
+Dreaming herself the heroine
+Of the romances she preferred,
+Clarissa, Julia, Delphine,--(32)
+Tattiana through the forest erred,
+And the bad book accompanies.
+Upon those pages she descries
+Her passion's faithful counterpart,
+Fruit of the yearnings of the heart.
+She heaves a sigh and deep intent
+On raptures, sorrows not her own,
+She murmurs in an undertone
+A letter for her hero meant:
+That hero, though his merit shone,
+Was certainly no Grandison.
+
+[Note 32: Referring to Richardson's "Clarissa Harlowe," "La
+Nouvelle Heloise," and Madame de Stael's "Delphine."]
+
+X
+
+Alas! my friends, the years flit by
+And after them at headlong pace
+The evanescent fashions fly
+In motley and amusing chase.
+The world is ever altering!
+Farthingales, patches, were the thing,
+And courtier, fop, and usurer
+Would once in powdered wig appear;
+Time was, the poet's tender quill
+In hopes of everlasting fame
+A finished madrigal would frame
+Or couplets more ingenious still;
+Time was, a valiant general might
+Serve who could neither read nor write.
+
+XI
+
+Time was, in style magniloquent
+Authors replete with sacred fire
+Their heroes used to represent
+All that perfection could desire;
+Ever by adverse fate oppressed,
+Their idols they were wont to invest
+With intellect, a taste refined,
+And handsome countenance combined,
+A heart wherein pure passion burnt;
+The excited hero in a trice
+Was ready for self-sacrifice,
+And in the final tome we learnt,
+Vice had due punishment awarded,
+Virtue was with a bride rewarded.
+
+XII
+
+But now our minds are mystified
+And Virtue acts as a narcotic,
+Vice in romance is glorified
+And triumphs in career erotic.
+The monsters of the British Muse
+Deprive our schoolgirls of repose,
+The idols of their adoration
+A Vampire fond of meditation,
+Or Melmoth, gloomy wanderer he,
+The Eternal Jew or the Corsair
+Or the mysterious Sbogar.(33)
+Byron's capricious phantasy
+Could in romantic mantle drape
+E'en hopeless egoism's dark shape.
+
+[Note 33: "Melmoth," a romance by Maturin, and "Jean Sbogar," by
+Ch. Nodier. "The Vampire," a tale published in 1819, was
+erroneously attributed to Lord Byron. "Salathiel; the Eternal
+Jew," a romance by Geo. Croly.]
+
+XIII
+
+My friends, what means this odd digression?
+May be that I by heaven's decrees
+Shall abdicate the bard's profession,
+And shall adopt some new caprice.
+Thus having braved Apollo's rage
+With humble prose I'll fill my page
+And a romance in ancient style
+Shall my declining years beguile;
+Nor shall my pen paint terribly
+The torment born of crime unseen,
+But shall depict the touching scene
+Of Russian domesticity;
+I will descant on love's sweet dream,
+The olden time shall be my theme.
+
+XIV
+
+Old people's simple conversations
+My unpretending page shall fill,
+Their offspring's innocent flirtations
+By the old lime-tree or the rill,
+Their Jealousy and separation
+And tears of reconciliation:
+Fresh cause of quarrel then I'll find,
+But finally in wedlock bind.
+The passionate speeches I'll repeat,
+Accents of rapture or despair
+I uttered to my lady fair
+Long ago, prostrate at her feet.
+Then they came easily enow,
+My tongue is somewhat rusty now.
+
+XV
+
+Tattiana! sweet Tattiana, see!
+What bitter tears with thee I shed!
+Thou hast resigned thy destiny
+Unto a ruthless tyrant dread.
+Thou'lt suffer, dearest, but before,
+Hope with her fascinating power
+To dire contentment shall give birth
+And thou shalt taste the joys of earth.
+Thou'lt quaff love's sweet envenomed stream,
+Fantastic images shall swarm
+In thy imagination warm,
+Of happy meetings thou shalt dream,
+And wheresoe'er thy footsteps err,
+Confront thy fated torturer!
+
+XVI
+
+Love's pangs Tattiana agonize.
+She seeks the garden in her need--
+Sudden she stops, casts down her eyes
+And cares not farther to proceed;
+Her bosom heaves whilst crimson hues
+With sudden flush her cheeks suffuse,
+Barely to draw her breath she seems,
+Her eye with fire unwonted gleams.
+And now 'tis night, the guardian moon
+Sails her allotted course on high,
+And from the misty woodland nigh
+The nightingale trills forth her tune;
+Restless Tattiana sleepless lay
+And thus unto her nurse did say:
+
+XVII
+
+"Nurse, 'tis so close I cannot rest.
+Open the window--sit by me."
+"What ails thee, dear?"--"I feel depressed.
+Relate some ancient history."
+"But which, my dear?--In days of yore
+Within my memory I bore
+Many an ancient legend which
+In monsters and fair dames was rich;
+But now my mind is desolate,
+What once I knew is clean forgot--
+Alas! how wretched now my lot!"
+"But tell me, nurse, can you relate
+The days which to your youth belong?
+Were you in love when you were young?"--
+
+XVIII
+
+"Alack! Tattiana," she replied,
+"We never loved in days of old,
+My mother-in-law who lately died(34)
+Had killed me had the like been told."
+"How came you then to wed a man?"--
+"Why, as God ordered! My Ivan
+Was younger than myself, my light,
+For I myself was thirteen quite;(35)
+The matchmaker a fortnight sped,
+Her suit before my parents pressing:
+At last my father gave his blessing,
+And bitter tears of fright I shed.
+Weeping they loosed my tresses long(36)
+And led me off to church with song."
+
+[Note 34: A young married couple amongst Russian peasants
+reside in the house of the bridegroom's father till the
+"tiaglo," or family circle is broken up by his death.]
+
+[Note 35: Marriages amongst Russian serfs used formerly to
+take place at ridiculously early ages. Haxthausen asserts
+that strong hearty peasant women were to be seen at work
+in the fields with their infant husbands in their arms. The
+inducement lay in the fact that the "tiaglo" (see previous
+note) received an additional lot of the communal land for
+every male added to its number, though this could have formed
+an inducement in the southern and fertile provinces of Russia
+only, as it is believed that agriculture in the north is so
+unremunerative that land has often to be forced upon the
+peasants, in order that the taxes, for which the whole Commune
+is responsible to Government, may be paid. The abuse of early
+marriages was regulated by Tsar Nicholas.]
+
+[Note 36: Courtships were not unfrequently carried on in the
+larger villages, which alone could support such an individual,
+by means of a "svakha," or matchmaker. In Russia unmarried
+girls wear their hair in a single long plait or tail, "kossa;"
+the married women, on the other hand, in two, which are twisted
+into the head-gear.]
+
+XIX
+
+"Then amongst strangers I was left--
+But I perceive thou dost not heed--"
+"Alas! dear nurse, my heart is cleft,
+Mortally sick I am indeed.
+Behold, my sobs I scarce restrain--"
+"My darling child, thou art in pain.--
+The Lord deliver her and save!
+Tell me at once what wilt thou have?
+I'll sprinkle thee with holy water.--
+How thy hands burn!"--"Dear nurse, I'm well.
+I am--in love--you know--don't tell!"
+"The Lord be with thee, O my daughter!"--
+And the old nurse a brief prayer said
+And crossed with trembling hand the maid.
+
+XX
+
+"I am in love," her whispers tell
+The aged woman in her woe:
+"My heart's delight, thou art not well."--
+"I am in love, nurse! leave me now."
+Behold! the moon was shining bright
+And showed with an uncertain light
+Tattiana's beauty, pale with care,
+Her tears and her dishevelled hair;
+And on the footstool sitting down
+Beside our youthful heroine fair,
+A kerchief round her silver hair
+The aged nurse in ample gown,(37)
+Whilst all creation seemed to dream
+Enchanted by the moon's pale beam.
+
+[Note 37: It is thus that I am compelled to render a female
+garment not known, so far as I am aware, to Western Europe.
+It is called by the natives "doushegreika," that is to say,
+"warmer of the soul"--in French, chaufferette de l'ame. It
+is a species of thick pelisse worn over the "sarafan," or
+gown.]
+
+XXI
+
+But borne in spirit far away
+Tattiana gazes on the moon,
+And starting suddenly doth say:
+"Nurse, leave me. I would be alone.
+Pen, paper bring: the table too
+Draw near. I soon to sleep shall go--
+Good-night." Behold! she is alone!
+'Tis silent--on her shines the moon--
+Upon her elbow she reclines,
+And Eugene ever in her soul
+Indites an inconsiderate scroll
+Wherein love innocently pines.
+Now it is ready to be sent--
+For whom, Tattiana, is it meant?
+
+XXII
+
+I have known beauties cold and raw
+As Winter in their purity,
+Striking the intellect with awe
+By dull insensibility,
+And I admired their common sense
+And natural benevolence,
+But, I acknowledge, from them fled;
+For on their brows I trembling read
+The inscription o'er the gates of Hell
+"Abandon hope for ever here!"(38)
+Love to inspire doth woe appear
+To such--delightful to repel.
+Perchance upon the Neva e'en
+Similar dames ye may have seen.
+
+[Note 38: A Russian annotator complains that the poet has
+mutilated Dante's famous line.]
+
+XXIII
+
+Amid submissive herds of men
+Virgins miraculous I see,
+Who selfishly unmoved remain
+Alike by sighs and flattery.
+But what astonished do I find
+When harsh demeanour hath consigned
+A timid love to banishment?--
+On fresh allurements they are bent,
+At least by show of sympathy;
+At least their accents and their words
+Appear attuned to softer chords;
+And then with blind credulity
+The youthful lover once again
+Pursues phantasmagoria vain.
+
+XXIV
+
+Why is Tattiana guiltier deemed?--
+Because in singleness of thought
+She never of deception dreamed
+But trusted the ideal she wrought?--
+Because her passion wanted art,
+Obeyed the impulses of heart?--
+Because she was so innocent,
+That Heaven her character had blent
+With an imagination wild,
+With intellect and strong volition
+And a determined disposition,
+An ardent heart and yet so mild?--
+Doth love's incautiousness in her
+So irremissible appear?
+
+XXV
+
+O ye whom tender love hath pained
+Without the ken of parents both,
+Whose hearts responsive have remained
+To the impressions of our youth,
+The all-entrancing joys of love--
+Young ladies, if ye ever strove
+The mystic lines to tear away
+A lover's letter might convey,
+Or into bold hands anxiously
+Have e'er a precious tress consigned,
+Or even, silent and resigned,
+When separation's hour drew nigh,
+Have felt love's agitated kiss
+With tears, confused emotions, bliss,--
+
+XXVI
+
+With unanimity complete,
+Condemn not weak Tattiana mine;
+Do not cold-bloodedly repeat
+The sneers of critics superfine;
+And you, O maids immaculate,
+Whom vice, if named, doth agitate
+E'en as the presence of a snake,
+I the same admonition make.
+Who knows? with love's consuming flame
+Perchance you also soon may burn,
+Then to some gallant in your turn
+Will be ascribed by treacherous Fame
+The triumph of a conquest new.
+The God of Love is after you!
+
+XXVII
+
+A coquette loves by calculation,
+Tattiana's love was quite sincere,
+A love which knew no limitation,
+Even as the love of children dear.
+She did not think "procrastination
+Enhances love in estimation
+And thus secures the prey we seek.
+His vanity first let us pique
+With hope and then perplexity,
+Excruciate the heart and late
+With jealous fire resuscitate,
+Lest jaded with satiety,
+The artful prisoner should seek
+Incessantly his chains to break."
+
+XXVIII
+
+I still a complication view,
+My country's honour and repute
+Demands that I translate for you
+The letter which Tattiana wrote.
+At Russ she was by no means clever
+And read our newspapers scarce ever,
+And in her native language she
+Possessed nor ease nor fluency,
+So she in French herself expressed.
+I cannot help it I declare,
+Though hitherto a lady ne'er
+In Russ her love made manifest,
+And never hath our language proud
+In correspondence been allowed.(39)
+
+[Note 39: It is well known that until the reign of the late Tsar
+French was the language of the Russian court and of Russian
+fashionable society. It should be borne in mind that at the time
+this poem was written literary warfare more or less open was
+being waged between two hostile schools of Russian men of
+letters. These consisted of the _Arzamass_, or French school, to
+which Pushkin himself together with his uncle Vassili Pushkin
+the "Nestor of the Arzamass" belonged, and their opponents who
+devoted themselves to the cultivation of the vernacular.]
+
+XXIX
+
+They wish that ladies should, I hear,
+Learn Russian, but the Lord defend!
+I can't conceive a little dear
+With the "Well-Wisher" in her hand!(40)
+I ask, all ye who poets are,
+Is it not true? the objects fair,
+To whom ye for unnumbered crimes
+Had to compose in secret rhymes,
+To whom your hearts were consecrate,--
+Did they not all the Russian tongue
+With little knowledge and that wrong
+In charming fashion mutilate?
+Did not their lips with foreign speech
+The native Russian tongue impeach?
+
+[Note 40: The "Blago-Namierenni," or "Well-Wisher," was an
+inferior Russian newspaper of the day, much scoffed at by
+contemporaries. The editor once excused himself for some
+gross error by pleading that he had been "on the loose."]
+
+XXX
+
+God grant I meet not at a ball
+Or at a promenade mayhap,
+A schoolmaster in yellow shawl
+Or a professor in tulle cap.
+As rosy lips without a smile,
+The Russian language I deem vile
+Without grammatical mistakes.
+May be, and this my terror wakes,
+The fair of the next generation,
+As every journal now entreats,
+Will teach grammatical conceits,
+Introduce verse in conversation.
+But I--what is all this to me?
+Will to the old times faithful be.
+
+XXXI
+
+Speech careless, incorrect, but soft,
+With inexact pronunciation
+Raises within my breast as oft
+As formerly much agitation.
+Repentance wields not now her spell
+And gallicisms I love as well
+As the sins of my youthful days
+Or Bogdanovitch's sweet lays.(41)
+But I must now employ my Muse
+With the epistle of my fair;
+I promised!--Did I so?--Well, there!
+Now I am ready to refuse.
+I know that Parny's tender pen(42)
+Is no more cherished amongst men.
+
+[Note 41: Hippolyte Bogdanovitch--b. 1743, d. 1803--though
+possessing considerable poetical talent was like many other
+Russian authors more remarkable for successful imitation
+than for original genius. His most remarkable production
+is "Doushenka," "The Darling," a composition somewhat in
+the style of La Fontaine's "Psyche." Its merit consists in
+graceful phraseology, and a strong pervading sense of humour.]
+
+[Note 42: Parny--a French poet of the era of the first Napoleon,
+b. 1753, d. 1814. Introduced to the aged Voltaire during
+his last visit to Paris, the patriarch laid his hands upon
+the youth's head and exclaimed: "Mon cher Tibulle." He is
+chiefly known for his erotic poetry which attracted the
+affectionate regard of the youthful Pushkin when a student
+at the Lyceum. We regret to add that, having accepted a
+pension from Napoleon, Parny forthwith proceeded to damage
+his literary reputation by inditing an "epic" poem entitled
+"Goddam! Goddam! par un French--Dog." It is descriptive
+of the approaching conquest of Britain by Napoleon, and
+treats the embryo enterprise as if already conducted to a
+successful conclusion and become matter of history. A good
+account of the bard and his creations will be found in the
+_Saturday Review_ of the 2d August 1879.]
+
+XXXII
+
+Bard of the "Feasts," and mournful breast,(43)
+If thou wert sitting by my side,
+With this immoderate request
+I should alarm our friendship tried:
+In one of thine enchanting lays
+To russify the foreign phrase
+Of my impassioned heroine.
+Where art thou? Come! pretensions mine
+I yield with a low reverence;
+But lonely beneath Finnish skies
+Where melancholy rocks arise
+He wanders in his indolence;
+Careless of fame his spirit high
+Hears not my importunity!
+
+[Note 43: Evgeny Baratynski, a contemporary of Pushkin and a
+lyric poet of some originality and talent. The "Feasts" is
+a short brilliant poem in praise of conviviality. Pushkin
+is therein praised as the best of companions "beside the
+bottle."]
+
+XXXIII
+
+Tattiana's letter I possess,
+I guard it as a holy thing,
+And though I read it with distress,
+I'm o'er it ever pondering.
+Inspired by whom this tenderness,
+This gentle daring who could guess?
+Who this soft nonsense could impart,
+Imprudent prattle of the heart,
+Attractive in its banefulness?
+I cannot understand. But lo!
+A feeble version read below,
+A print without the picture's grace,
+Or, as it were, the Freischutz' score
+Strummed by a timid schoolgirl o'er.
+
+
+Tattiana's Letter to Oneguine
+
+I write to you! Is more required?
+Can lower depths beyond remain?
+'Tis in your power now, if desired,
+To crush me with a just disdain.
+But if my lot unfortunate
+You in the least commiserate
+You will not all abandon me.
+At first, I clung to secrecy:
+Believe me, of my present shame
+You never would have heard the name,
+If the fond hope I could have fanned
+At times, if only once a week,
+To see you by our fireside stand,
+To listen to the words you speak,
+Address to you one single phrase
+And then to meditate for days
+Of one thing till again we met.
+'Tis said you are a misanthrope,
+In country solitude you mope,
+And we--an unattractive set--
+Can hearty welcome give alone.
+Why did you visit our poor place?
+Forgotten in the village lone,
+I never should have seen your face
+And bitter torment never known.
+The untutored spirit's pangs calmed down
+By time (who can anticipate?)
+I had found my predestinate,
+Become a faithful wife and e'en
+A fond and careful mother been.
+
+Another! to none other I
+My heart's allegiance can resign,
+My doom has been pronounced on high,
+'Tis Heaven's will and I am thine.
+The sum of my existence gone
+But promise of our meeting gave,
+I feel thou wast by God sent down
+My guardian angel to the grave.
+Thou didst to me in dreams appear,
+Unseen thou wast already dear.
+Thine eye subdued me with strange glance,
+I heard thy voice's resonance
+Long ago. Dream it cannot be!
+Scarce hadst thou entered thee I knew,
+I flushed up, stupefied I grew,
+And cried within myself: 'tis he!
+Is it not truth? in tones suppressed
+With thee I conversed when I bore
+Comfort and succour to the poor,
+And when I prayer to Heaven addressed
+To ease the anguish of my breast.
+Nay! even as this instant fled,
+Was it not thou, O vision bright,
+That glimmered through the radiant night
+And gently hovered o'er my head?
+Was it not thou who thus didst stoop
+To whisper comfort, love and hope?
+Who art thou? Guardian angel sent
+Or torturer malevolent?
+Doubt and uncertainty decide:
+All this may be an empty dream,
+Delusions of a mind untried,
+Providence otherwise may deem--
+Then be it so! My destiny
+From henceforth I confide to thee!
+Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour
+And thy protection I implore.
+Imagine! Here alone am I!
+No one my anguish comprehends,
+At times my reason almost bends,
+And silently I here must die--
+But I await thee: scarce alive
+My heart with but one look revive;
+Or to disturb my dreams approach
+Alas! with merited reproach.
+
+'Tis finished. Horrible to read!
+With shame I shudder and with dread--
+But boldly I myself resign:
+Thine honour is my countersign!
+
+XXXIV
+
+Tattiana moans and now she sighs
+And in her grasp the letter shakes,
+Even the rosy wafer dries
+Upon her tongue which fever bakes.
+Her head upon her breast declines
+And an enchanting shoulder shines
+From her half-open vest of night.
+But lo! already the moon's light
+Is waning. Yonder valley deep
+Looms gray behind the mist and morn
+Silvers the brook; the shepherd's horn
+Arouses rustics from their sleep.
+'Tis day, the family downstairs,
+But nought for this Tattiana cares.
+
+XXXV
+
+The break of day she doth not see,
+But sits in bed with air depressed,
+Nor on the letter yet hath she
+The image of her seal impressed.
+But gray Phillippevna the door
+Opened with care, and entering bore
+A cup of tea upon a tray.
+"'Tis time, my child, arise, I pray!
+My beauty, thou art ready too.
+My morning birdie, yesternight
+I was half silly with affright.
+But praised be God! in health art thou!
+The pains of night have wholly fled,
+Thy cheek is as a poppy red!"
+
+XXXVI
+
+"Ah! nurse, a favour do for me!"
+"Command me, darling, what you choose"
+"Do not--you might--suspicious be;
+But look you--ah! do not refuse."
+"I call to witness God on high--"
+"Then send your grandson quietly
+To take this letter to O-- Well!
+Unto our neighbour. Mind you tell--
+Command him not to say a word--
+I mean my name not to repeat."
+"To whom is it to go, my sweet?
+Of late I have been quite absurd,--
+So many neighbours here exist--
+Am I to go through the whole list?"
+
+XXXVII
+
+"How dull you are this morning, nurse!"
+"My darling, growing old am I!
+In age the memory gets worse,
+But I was sharp in times gone by.
+In times gone by thy bare command--"
+"Oh! nurse, nurse, you don't understand!
+What is thy cleverness to me?
+The letter is the thing, you see,--
+Oneguine's letter!"--"Ah! the thing!
+Now don't be cross with me, my soul,
+You know that I am now a fool--
+But why are your cheeks whitening?"
+"Nothing, good nurse, there's nothing wrong,
+But send your grandson before long."
+
+XXXVIII
+
+No answer all that day was borne.
+Another passed; 'twas just the same.
+Pale as a ghost and dressed since morn
+Tattiana waits. No answer came!
+Olga's admirer came that day:
+"Tell me, why doth your comrade stay?"
+The hostess doth interrogate:
+"He hath neglected us of late."--
+Tattiana blushed, her heart beat quick--
+"He promised here this day to ride,"
+Lenski unto the dame replied,
+"The post hath kept him, it is like."
+Shamefaced, Tattiana downward looked
+As if he cruelly had joked!
+
+XXXIX
+
+'Twas dusk! Upon the table bright
+Shrill sang the _samovar_ at eve,(44)
+The china teapot too ye might
+In clouds of steam above perceive.
+Into the cups already sped
+By Olga's hand distributed
+The fragrant tea in darkling stream,
+And a boy handed round the cream.
+Tania doth by the casement linger
+And breathes upon the chilly glass,
+Dreaming of what not, pretty lass,
+And traces with a slender finger
+Upon its damp opacity,
+The mystic monogram, O. E.
+
+[Note 44: The _samovar_, i.e. "self-boiler," is merely an
+urn for hot water having a fire in the center. We may observe
+a similar contrivance in our own old-fashioned tea-urns which
+are provided with a receptacle for a red-hot iron cylinder in
+center. The tea-pot is usually placed on the top of the
+_samovar_.]
+
+XL
+
+In the meantime her spirit sinks,
+Her weary eyes are filled with tears--
+A horse's hoofs she hears--She shrinks!
+Nearer they come--Eugene appears!
+Ah! than a spectre from the dead
+More swift the room Tattiana fled,
+From hall to yard and garden flies,
+Not daring to cast back her eyes.
+She fears and like an arrow rushes
+Through park and meadow, wood and brake,
+The bridge and alley to the lake,
+Brambles she snaps and lilacs crushes,
+The flowerbeds skirts, the brook doth meet,
+Till out of breath upon a seat
+
+XLI
+
+She sank.--
+   "He's here! Eugene is here!
+Merciful God, what will he deem?"
+Yet still her heart, which torments tear,
+Guards fondly hope's uncertain dream.
+She waits, on fire her trembling frame--
+Will he pursue?--But no one came.
+She heard of servant-maids the note,
+Who in the orchards gathered fruit,
+Singing in chorus all the while.
+(This by command; for it was found,
+However cherries might abound,
+They disappeared by stealth and guile,
+So mouths they stopt with song, not fruit--
+Device of rural minds acute!)
+
+
+The Maidens' Song
+
+Young maidens, fair maidens,
+Friends and companions,
+Disport yourselves, maidens,
+Arouse yourselves, fair ones.
+Come sing we in chorus
+The secrets of maidens.
+Allure the young gallant
+With dance and with song.
+As we lure the young gallant,
+Espy him approaching,
+Disperse yourselves, darlings,
+And pelt him with cherries,
+With cherries, red currants,
+With raspberries, cherries.
+Approach not to hearken
+To secrets of virgins,
+Approach not to gaze at
+The frolics of maidens.
+
+XLII
+
+They sang, whilst negligently seated,
+Attentive to the echoing sound,
+Tattiana with impatience waited
+Until her heart less high should bound--
+Till the fire in her cheek decreased;
+But tremor still her frame possessed,
+Nor did her blushes fade away,
+More crimson every moment they.
+Thus shines the wretched butterfly,
+With iridescent wing doth flap
+When captured in a schoolboy's cap;
+Thus shakes the hare when suddenly
+She from the winter corn espies
+A sportsman who in covert lies.
+
+XLIII
+
+But finally she heaves a sigh,
+And rising from her bench proceeds;
+But scarce had turned the corner nigh,
+Which to the neighbouring alley leads,
+When Eugene like a ghost did rise
+Before her straight with roguish eyes.
+Tattiana faltered, and became
+Scarlet as burnt by inward flame.
+But this adventure's consequence
+To-day, my friends, at any rate,
+I am not strong enough to state;
+I, after so much eloquence,
+Must take a walk and rest a bit--
+Some day I'll somehow finish it.
+
+
+End of Canto the Third
+
+
+CANTO THE FOURTH
+
+Rural Life
+
+'La Morale est dans la nature des choses.'--Necker
+
+
+Canto The Fourth
+
+[Mikhailovskoe, 1825]
+
+I
+
+THE less we love a lady fair
+The easier 'tis to gain her grace,
+And the more surely we ensnare
+Her in the pitfalls which we place.
+Time was when cold seduction strove
+To swagger as the art of love,
+Everywhere trumpeting its feats,
+Not seeking love but sensual sweets.
+But this amusement delicate
+Was worthy of that old baboon,
+Our fathers used to dote upon;
+The Lovelaces are out of date,
+Their glory with their heels of red
+And long perukes hath vanished.
+
+II
+
+For who imposture can endure,
+A constant harping on one tune,
+Serious endeavours to assure
+What everybody long has known;
+Ever to hear the same replies
+And overcome antipathies
+Which never have existed, e'en
+In little maidens of thirteen?
+And what like menaces fatigues,
+Entreaties, oaths, fictitious fear,
+Epistles of six sheets or near,
+Rings, tears, deceptions and intrigues,
+Aunts, mothers and their scrutiny,
+And husbands' tedious amity?
+
+III
+
+Such were the musings of Eugene.
+He in the early years of life
+Had a deluded victim been
+Of error and the passions' strife.
+By daily life deteriorated,
+Awhile this beauty captivated,
+And that no longer could inspire.
+Slowly exhausted by desire,
+Yet satiated with success,
+In solitude or worldly din,
+He heard his soul's complaint within,
+With laughter smothered weariness:
+And thus he spent eight years of time,
+Destroyed the blossom of his prime.
+
+IV
+
+Though beauty he no more adored,
+He still made love in a queer way;
+Rebuffed--as quickly reassured,
+Jilted--glad of a holiday.
+Without enthusiasm he met
+The fair, nor parted with regret,
+Scarce mindful of their love and guile.
+Thus a guest with composure will
+To take a hand at whist oft come:
+He takes his seat, concludes his game,
+And straight returning whence he came,
+Tranquilly goes to sleep at home,
+And in the morning doth not know
+Whither that evening he will go.
+
+V
+
+However, Tania's letter reading,
+Eugene was touched with sympathy;
+The language of her girlish pleading
+Aroused in him sweet reverie.
+He called to mind Tattiana's grace,
+Pallid and melancholy face,
+And in a vision, sinless, bright,
+His spirit sank with strange delight.
+May be the empire of the sense,
+Regained authority awhile,
+But he desired not to beguile
+Such open-hearted innocence.
+But to the garden once again
+Wherein we lately left the twain.
+
+VI
+
+Two minutes they in silence spent,
+Oneguine then approached and said:
+"You have a letter to me sent.
+Do not excuse yourself. I read
+Confessions which a trusting heart
+May well in innocence impart.
+Charming is your sincerity,
+Feelings which long had ceased to be
+It wakens in my breast again.
+But I came not to adulate:
+Your frankness I shall compensate
+By an avowal just as plain.
+An ear to my confession lend;
+To thy decree my will I bend.
+
+VII
+
+"If the domestic hearth could bless--
+My sum of happiness contained;
+If wife and children to possess
+A happy destiny ordained:
+If in the scenes of home I might
+E'en for an instant find delight,
+Then, I say truly, none but thee
+I would desire my bride to be--
+I say without poetic phrase,
+Found the ideal of my youth,
+Thee only would I choose, in truth,
+As partner of my mournful days,
+Thee only, pledge of all things bright,
+And be as happy--as I might.
+
+VIII
+
+"But strange am I to happiness;
+'Tis foreign to my cast of thought;
+Me your perfections would not bless;
+I am not worthy them in aught;
+And honestly 'tis my belief
+Our union would produce but grief.
+Though now my love might be intense,
+Habit would bring indifference.
+I see you weep. Those tears of yours
+Tend not my heart to mitigate,
+But merely to exasperate;
+Judge then what roses would be ours,
+What pleasures Hymen would prepare
+For us, may be for many a year.
+
+IX
+
+"What can be drearier than the house,
+Wherein the miserable wife
+Deplores a most unworthy spouse
+And leads a solitary life?
+The tiresome man, her value knowing,
+Yet curses on his fate bestowing,
+Is full of frigid jealousy,
+Mute, solemn, frowning gloomily.
+Such am I. This did ye expect,
+When in simplicity ye wrote
+Your innocent and charming note
+With so much warmth and intellect?
+Hath fate apportioned unto thee
+This lot in life with stern decree?
+
+X
+
+"Ideas and time ne'er backward move;
+My soul I cannot renovate--
+I love you with a brother's love,
+Perchance one more affectionate.
+Listen to me without disdain.
+A maid hath oft, may yet again
+Replace the visions fancy drew;
+Thus trees in spring their leaves renew
+As in their turn the seasons roll.
+'Tis evidently Heaven's will
+You fall in love again. But still--
+Learn to possess more self-control.
+Not all will like myself proceed--
+And thoughtlessness to woe might lead."
+
+XI
+
+Thus did our friend Oneguine preach:
+Tattiana, dim with tears her eyes,
+Attentive listened to his speech,
+All breathless and without replies.
+His arm he offers. Mute and sad
+(_Mechanically_, let us add),
+Tattiana doth accept his aid;
+And, hanging down her head, the maid
+Around the garden homeward hies.
+Together they returned, nor word
+Of censure for the same incurred;
+The country hath its liberties
+And privileges nice allowed,
+Even as Moscow, city proud.
+
+XII
+
+Confess, O ye who this peruse,
+Oneguine acted very well
+By poor Tattiana in the blues;
+'Twas not the first time, I can tell
+You, he a noble mind disclosed,
+Though some men, evilly disposed,
+Spared him not their asperities.
+His friends and also enemies
+(One and the same thing it may be)
+Esteemed him much as the world goes.
+Yes! every one must have his foes,
+But Lord! from friends deliver me!
+The deuce take friends, my friends, amends
+I've had to make for having friends!
+
+XIII
+
+But how? Quite so. Though I dismiss
+Dark, unavailing reverie,
+I just hint, in parenthesis,
+There is no stupid calumny
+Born of a babbler in a loft
+And by the world repeated oft,
+There is no fishmarket retort
+And no ridiculous report,
+Which your true friend with a sweet smile
+Where fashionable circles meet
+A hundred times will not repeat,
+Quite inadvertently meanwhile;
+And yet he in your cause would strive
+And loves you as--a relative!
+
+XIV
+
+Ahem! Ahem! My reader noble,
+Are all your relatives quite well?
+Permit me; is it worth the trouble
+For your instruction here to tell
+What I by relatives conceive?
+These are your relatives, believe:
+Those whom we ought to love, caress,
+With spiritual tenderness;
+Whom, as the custom is of men,
+We visit about Christmas Day,
+Or by a card our homage pay,
+That until Christmas comes again
+They may forget that we exist.
+And so--God bless them, if He list.
+
+XV
+
+In this the love of the fair sex
+Beats that of friends and relatives:
+In love, although its tempests vex,
+Our liberty at least survives:
+Agreed! but then the whirl of fashion,
+The natural fickleness of passion,
+The torrent of opinion,
+And the fair sex as light as down!
+Besides the hobbies of a spouse
+Should be respected throughout life
+By every proper-minded wife,
+And this the faithful one allows,
+When in as instant she is lost,--
+Satan will jest, and at love's cost.
+
+XVI
+
+Oh! where bestow our love? Whom trust?
+Where is he who doth not deceive?
+Who words and actions will adjust
+To standards in which we believe?
+Oh! who is not calumnious?
+Who labours hard to humour us?
+To whom are our misfortunes grief
+And who is not a tiresome thief?
+My venerated reader, oh!
+Cease the pursuit of shadows vain,
+Spare yourself unavailing pain
+And all your love on self bestow;
+A worthy object 'tis, and well
+I know there's none more amiable.
+
+XVII
+
+But from the interview what flowed?
+Alas! It is not hard to guess.
+The insensate fire of love still glowed
+Nor discontinued to distress
+A spirit which for sorrow yearned.
+Tattiana more than ever burned
+With hopeless passion: from her bed
+Sweet slumber winged its way and fled.
+Her health, life's sweetness and its bloom,
+Her smile and maidenly repose,
+All vanished as an echo goes.
+Across her youth a shade had come,
+As when the tempest's veil is drawn
+Across the smiling face of dawn.
+
+XVIII
+
+Alas! Tattiana fades away,
+Grows pale and sinks, but nothing says;
+Listless is she the livelong day
+Nor interest in aught betrays.
+Shaking with serious air the head,
+In whispers low the neighbours said:
+'Tis time she to the altar went!
+But enough! Now, 'tis my intent
+The imagination to enliven
+With love which happiness extends;
+Against my inclination, friends,
+By sympathy I have been driven.
+Forgive me! Such the love I bear
+My heroine, Tattiana dear.
+
+XIX
+
+Vladimir, hourly more a slave
+To youthful Olga's beauty bright,
+Into delicious bondage gave
+His ardent soul with full delight.
+Always together, eventide
+Found them in darkness side by side,
+At morn, hand clasped in hand, they rove
+Around the meadow and the grove.
+And what resulted? Drunk with love,
+But with confused and bashful air,
+Lenski at intervals would dare,
+If Olga smilingly approve,
+Dally with a dishevelled tress
+Or kiss the border of her dress.
+
+XX
+
+To Olga frequently he would
+Some nice instructive novel read,
+Whose author nature understood
+Better than Chateaubriand did
+Yet sometimes pages two or three
+(Nonsense and pure absurdity,
+For maiden's hearing deemed unfit),
+He somewhat blushing would omit:
+Far from the rest the pair would creep
+And (elbows on the table) they
+A game of chess would often play,
+Buried in meditation deep,
+Till absently Vladimir took
+With his own pawn alas! his rook!
+
+XXI
+
+Homeward returning, he at home
+Is occupied with Olga fair,
+An album, fly-leaf of the tome,
+He leisurely adorns for her.
+Landscapes thereon he would design,
+A tombstone, Aphrodite's shrine,
+Or, with a pen and colours fit,
+A dove which on a lyre doth sit;
+The "in memoriam" pages sought,
+Where many another hand had signed
+A tender couplet he combined,
+A register of fleeting thought,
+A flimsy trace of musings past
+Which might for many ages last.
+
+XXII
+
+Surely ye all have overhauled
+A country damsel's album trim,
+Which all her darling friends have scrawled
+From first to last page to the rim.
+Behold! orthography despising,
+Metreless verses recognizing
+By friendship how they were abused,
+Hewn, hacked, and otherwise ill-used.
+Upon the opening page ye find:
+_Qu'ecrirer-vouz sur ces tablettes?_
+Subscribed, _toujours a vous, Annette;_
+And on the last one, underlined:
+_Who in thy love finds more delight
+Beyond this may attempt to write_.
+
+XXIII
+
+Infallibly you there will find
+Two hearts, a torch, of flowers a wreath,
+And vows will probably be signed:
+_Affectionately yours till death_.
+Some army poet therein may
+Have smuggled his flagitious lay.
+In such an album with delight
+I would, my friends, inscriptions write,
+Because I should be sure, meanwhile,
+My verses, kindly meant, would earn
+Delighted glances in return;
+That afterwards with evil smile
+They would not solemnly debate
+If cleverly or not I prate.
+
+XXIV
+
+But, O ye tomes without compare,
+Which from the devil's bookcase start,
+Albums magnificent which scare
+The fashionable rhymester's heart!
+Yea! although rendered beauteous
+By Tolstoy's pencil marvellous,
+Though Baratynski verses penned,(45)
+The thunderbolt on you descend!
+Whene'er a brilliant courtly dame
+Presents her quarto amiably,
+Despair and anger seize on me,
+And a malicious epigram
+Trembles upon my lips from spite,--
+And madrigals I'm asked to write!
+
+[Note 45: Count Tolstoy, a celebrated artist who subsequently
+became Vice-President of the Academy of Arts at St. Petersburg.
+Baratynski, see Note 43.]
+
+XXV
+
+But Lenski madrigals ne'er wrote
+In Olga's album, youthful maid,
+To purest love he tuned his note
+Nor frigid adulation paid.
+What never was remarked or heard
+Of Olga he in song averred;
+His elegies, which plenteous streamed,
+Both natural and truthful seemed.
+Thus thou, Yazykoff, dost arise(46)
+In amorous flights when so inspired,
+Singing God knows what maid admired,
+And all thy precious elegies,
+Sometime collected, shall relate
+The story of thy life and fate.
+
+[Note 46: Yazykoff, a poet contemporary with Pushkin. He was
+an author of promise--unfulfilled.]
+
+XXVI
+
+Since Fame and Freedom he adored,
+Incited by his stormy Muse
+Odes Lenski also had outpoured,
+But Olga would not such peruse.
+When poets lachrymose recite
+Beneath the eyes of ladies bright
+Their own productions, some insist
+No greater pleasure can exist
+Just so! that modest swain is blest
+Who reads his visionary theme
+To the fair object of his dream,
+A beauty languidly at rest,
+Yes, happy--though she at his side
+By other thoughts be occupied.
+
+XXVII
+
+But I the products of my Muse,
+Consisting of harmonious lays,
+To my old nurse alone peruse,
+Companion of my childhood's days.
+Or, after dinner's dull repast,
+I by the button-hole seize fast
+My neighbour, who by chance drew near,
+And breathe a drama in his ear.
+Or else (I deal not here in jokes),
+Exhausted by my woes and rhymes,
+I sail upon my lake at times
+And terrify a swarm of ducks,
+Who, heard the music of my lay,
+Take to their wings and fly away.
+
+XXVIII
+
+But to Oneguine! _A propos_!
+Friends, I must your indulgence pray.
+His daily occupations, lo!
+Minutely I will now portray.
+A hermit's life Oneguine led,
+At seven in summer rose from bed,
+And clad in airy costume took
+His course unto the running brook.
+There, aping Gulnare's bard, he spanned
+His Hellespont from bank to bank,
+And then a cup of coffee drank,
+Some wretched journal in his hand;
+Then dressed himself...(*)
+
+[Note: Stanza left unfinished by the author.]
+
+XXIX
+
+Sound sleep, books, walking, were his bliss,
+The murmuring brook, the woodland shade,
+The uncontaminated kiss
+Of a young dark-eyed country maid,
+A fiery, yet well-broken horse,
+A dinner, whimsical each course,
+A bottle of a vintage white
+And solitude and calm delight.
+Such was Oneguine's sainted life,
+And such unconsciously he led,
+Nor marked how summer's prime had fled
+In aimless ease and far from strife,
+The curse of commonplace delight.
+And town and friends forgotten quite.
+
+XXX
+
+This northern summer of our own,
+On winters of the south a skit,
+Glimmers and dies. This is well known,
+Though we will not acknowledge it.
+Already Autumn chilled the sky,
+The tiny sun shone less on high
+And shorter had the days become.
+The forests in mysterious gloom
+Were stripped with melancholy sound,
+Upon the earth a mist did lie
+And many a caravan on high
+Of clamorous geese flew southward bound.
+A weary season was at hand--
+November at the gate did stand.
+
+XXXI
+
+The morn arises foggy, cold,
+The silent fields no peasant nears,
+The wolf upon the highways bold
+With his ferocious mate appears.
+Detecting him the passing horse
+snorts, and his rider bends his course
+And wisely gallops to the hill.
+No more at dawn the shepherd will
+Drive out the cattle from their shed,
+Nor at the hour of noon with sound
+Of horn in circle call them round.
+Singing inside her hut the maid
+Spins, whilst the friend of wintry night,
+The pine-torch, by her crackles bright.
+
+XXXII
+
+Already crisp hoar frosts impose
+O'er all a sheet of silvery dust
+(Readers expect the rhyme of _rose_,
+There! take it quickly, if ye must).
+Behold! than polished floor more nice
+The shining river clothed in ice;
+A joyous troop of little boys
+Engrave the ice with strident noise.
+A heavy goose on scarlet feet,
+Thinking to float upon the stream,
+Descends the bank with care extreme,
+But staggers, slips, and falls. We greet
+The first bright wreathing storm of snow
+Which falls in starry flakes below.
+
+XXXIII
+
+How in the country pass this time?
+Walking? The landscape tires the eye
+In winter by its blank and dim
+And naked uniformity.
+On horseback gallop o'er the steppe!
+Your steed, though rough-shod, cannot keep
+His footing on the treacherous rime
+And may fall headlong any time.
+Alone beneath your rooftree stay
+And read De Pradt or Walter Scott!(47)
+Keep your accounts! You'd rather not?
+Then get mad drunk or wroth; the day
+Will pass; the same to-morrow try--
+You'll spend your winter famously!
+
+[Note 47: The Abbe de Pradt: b. 1759, d. 1837. A political
+pamphleteer of the French Revolution: was at first an emigre,
+but made his peace with Napoleon and was appointed Archbishop
+of Malines.]
+
+XXXIV
+
+A true Childe Harold my Eugene
+To idle musing was a prey;
+At morn an icy bath within
+He sat, and then the livelong day,
+Alone within his habitation
+And buried deep in meditation,
+He round the billiard-table stalked,
+The balls impelled, the blunt cue chalked;
+When evening o'er the landscape looms,
+Billiards abandoned, cue forgot,
+A table to the fire is brought,
+And he waits dinner. Lenski comes,
+Driving abreast three horses gray.
+"Bring dinner now without delay!"
+
+XXXV
+
+Upon the table in a trice
+Of widow Clicquot or Moet
+A blessed bottle, placed in ice,
+For the young poet they display.
+Like Hippocrene it scatters light,
+Its ebullition foaming white
+(Like other things I could relate)
+My heart of old would captivate.
+The last poor obol I was worth--
+Was it not so?--for thee I gave,
+And thy inebriating wave
+Full many a foolish prank brought forth;
+And oh! what verses, what delights,
+Delicious visions, jests and fights!
+
+XXXVI
+
+Alas! my stomach it betrays
+With its exhilarating flow,
+And I confess that now-a-days
+I prefer sensible Bordeaux.
+To cope with Ay no more I dare,
+For Ay is like a mistress fair,
+Seductive, animated, bright,
+But wilful, frivolous, and light.
+But thou, Bordeaux, art like the friend
+Who in the agony of grief
+Is ever ready with relief,
+Assistance ever will extend,
+Or quietly partake our woe.
+All hail! my good old friend Bordeaux!
+
+XXXVII
+
+The fire sinks low. An ashy cloak
+The golden ember now enshrines,
+And barely visible the smoke
+Upward in a thin stream inclines.
+But little warmth the fireplace lends,
+Tobacco smoke the flue ascends,
+The goblet still is bubbling bright--
+Outside descend the mists of night.
+How pleasantly the evening jogs
+When o'er a glass with friends we prate
+Just at the hour we designate
+The time between the wolf and dogs--
+I cannot tell on what pretence--
+But lo! the friends to chat commence.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+"How are our neighbours fair, pray tell,
+Tattiana, saucy Olga thine?"
+"The family are all quite well--
+Give me just half a glass of wine--
+They sent their compliments--but oh!
+How charming Olga's shoulders grow!
+Her figure perfect grows with time!
+She is an angel! We sometime
+Must visit them. Come! you must own,
+My friend, 'tis but to pay a debt,
+For twice you came to them and yet
+You never since your nose have shown.
+But stay! A dolt am I who speak!
+They have invited you this week."
+
+XXXIX
+
+"Me?"--"Yes! It is Tattiana's fete
+Next Saturday. The Larina
+Told me to ask you. Ere that date
+Make up your mind to go there."--"Ah!
+It will be by a mob beset
+Of every sort and every set!"
+"Not in the least, assured am I!"
+"Who will be there?"--"The family.
+Do me a favour and appear.
+Will you?"--"Agreed."--"I thank you, friend,"
+And saying this Vladimir drained
+His cup unto his maiden dear.
+Then touching Olga they depart
+In fresh discourse. Such, love, thou art!
+
+XL
+
+He was most gay. The happy date
+In three weeks would arrive for them;
+The secrets of the marriage state
+And love's delicious diadem
+With rapturous longing he awaits,
+Nor in his dreams anticipates
+Hymen's embarrassments, distress,
+And freezing fits of weariness.
+Though we, of Hymen foes, meanwhile,
+In life domestic see a string
+Of pictures painful harrowing,
+A novel in Lafontaine's style,
+My wretched Lenski's fate I mourn,
+He seemed for matrimony born.
+
+XLI
+
+He was beloved: or say at least,
+He thought so, and existence charmed.
+The credulous indeed are blest,
+And he who, jealousy disarmed,
+In sensual sweets his soul doth steep
+As drunken tramps at nightfall sleep,
+Or, parable more flattering,
+As butterflies to blossoms cling.
+But wretched who anticipates,
+Whose brain no fond illusions daze,
+Who every gesture, every phrase
+In true interpretation hates:
+Whose heart experience icy made
+And yet oblivion forbade.
+
+
+End of Canto The Fourth
+
+
+
+CANTO THE FIFTH
+
+The Fete
+
+'Oh, do not dream these fearful dreams,
+   O my Svetlana.'--Joukovski
+
+Canto The Fifth
+
+[Note: Mikhailovskoe, 1825-6]
+
+I
+
+That year the autumn season late
+Kept lingering on as loath to go,
+All Nature winter seemed to await,
+Till January fell no snow--
+The third at night. Tattiana wakes
+Betimes, and sees, when morning breaks,
+Park, garden, palings, yard below
+And roofs near morn blanched o'er with snow;
+Upon the windows tracery,
+The trees in silvery array,
+Down in the courtyard magpies gay,
+And the far mountains daintily
+O'erspread with Winter's carpet bright,
+All so distinct, and all so white!
+
+II
+
+Winter! The peasant blithely goes
+To labour in his sledge forgot,
+His pony sniffing the fresh snows
+Just manages a feeble trot
+Though deep he sinks into the drift;
+Forth the _kibitka_ gallops swift,(48)
+Its driver seated on the rim
+In scarlet sash and sheepskin trim;
+Yonder the household lad doth run,
+Placed in a sledge his terrier black,
+Himself transformed into a hack;
+To freeze his finger hath begun,
+He laughs, although it aches from cold,
+His mother from the door doth scold.
+
+[Note 48: The "kibitka," properly speaking, whether on wheels
+or runners, is a vehicle with a hood not unlike a big cradle.]
+
+III
+
+In scenes like these it may be though,
+Ye feel but little interest,
+They are all natural and low,
+Are not with elegance impressed.
+Another bard with art divine
+Hath pictured in his gorgeous line
+The first appearance of the snows
+And all the joys which Winter knows.
+He will delight you, I am sure,
+When he in ardent verse portrays
+Secret excursions made in sleighs;
+But competition I abjure
+Either with him or thee in song,
+Bard of the Finnish maiden young.(49)
+
+[Note 49: The allusions in the foregoing stanza are in the first
+place to a poem entitled "The First Snow," by Prince Viazemski
+and secondly to "Eda," by Baratynski, a poem descriptive of life
+in Finland.]
+
+IV
+
+Tattiana, Russian to the core,
+Herself not knowing well the reason,
+The Russian winter did adore
+And the cold beauties of the season:
+On sunny days the glistening rime,
+Sledging, the snows, which at the time
+Of sunset glow with rosy light,
+The misty evenings ere Twelfth Night.
+These evenings as in days of old
+The Larinas would celebrate,
+The servants used to congregate
+And the young ladies fortunes told,
+And every year distributed
+Journeys and warriors to wed.
+
+V
+
+Tattiana in traditions old
+Believed, the people's wisdom weird,
+In dreams and what the moon foretold
+And what she from the cards inferred.
+Omens inspired her soul with fear,
+Mysteriously all objects near
+A hidden meaning could impart,
+Presentiments oppressed her heart.
+Lo! the prim cat upon the stove
+With one paw strokes her face and purrs,
+Tattiana certainly infers
+That guests approach: and when above
+The new moon's crescent slim she spied,
+Suddenly to the left hand side,
+
+VI
+
+She trembled and grew deadly pale.
+Or a swift meteor, may be,
+Across the gloom of heaven would sail
+And disappear in space; then she
+Would haste in agitation dire
+To mutter her concealed desire
+Ere the bright messenger had set.
+When in her walks abroad she met
+A friar black approaching near,(50)
+Or a swift hare from mead to mead
+Had run across her path at speed,
+Wholly beside herself with fear,
+Anticipating woe she pined,
+Certain misfortune near opined.
+
+[Note 50: The Russian clergy are divided into two classes:
+the white or secular, which is made up of the mass of parish
+priests, and the black who inhabit the monasteries, furnish
+the high dignitaries of the Church, and constitute that swarm
+of useless drones for whom Peter the Great felt such a deep
+repugnance.]
+
+VII
+
+Wherefore? She found a secret joy
+In horror for itself alone,
+Thus Nature doth our souls alloy,
+Thus her perversity hath shown.
+Twelfth Night approaches. Merry eves!(51)
+When thoughtless youth whom nothing grieves,
+Before whose inexperienced sight
+Life lies extended, vast and bright,
+To peer into the future tries.
+Old age through spectacles too peers,
+Although the destined coffin nears,
+Having lost all in life we prize.
+It matters not. Hope e'en to these
+With childlike lisp will lie to please.
+
+[Note 51: Refers to the "Sviatki" or Holy Nights between Christmas
+Eve and Twelfth Night. Divination, or the telling of fortunes
+by various expedients, is the favourite pastime on these
+occasions.]
+
+VIII
+
+Tattiana gazed with curious eye
+On melted wax in water poured;
+The clue unto some mystery
+She deemed its outline might afford.
+Rings from a dish of water full
+In order due the maidens pull;
+But when Tattiana's hand had ta'en
+A ring she heard the ancient strain:
+_The peasants there are rich as kings,
+They shovel silver with a spade,
+He whom we sing to shall be made
+Happy and glorious_. But this brings
+With sad refrain misfortune near.
+Girls the _kashourka_ much prefer.(52)
+
+[Note 52: During the "sviatki" it is a common custom for the girls
+to assemble around a table on which is placed a dish or basin of
+water which contains a ring. Each in her turn extracts the ring
+from the basin whilst the remainder sing in chorus the "podbliudni
+pessni," or "dish songs" before mentioned. These are popularly
+supposed to indicate the fortunes of the immediate holder of the
+ring. The first-named lines foreshadow death; the latter, the
+"kashourka," or "kitten song," indicates approaching marriage. It
+commences thus: "The cat asked the kitten to sleep on the stove."]
+
+IX
+
+Frosty the night; the heavens shone;
+The wondrous host of heavenly spheres
+Sailed silently in unison--
+Tattiana in the yard appears
+In a half-open dressing-gown
+And bends her mirror on the moon,
+But trembling on the mirror dark
+The sad moon only could remark.
+List! the snow crunches--he draws nigh!
+The girl on tiptoe forward bounds
+And her voice sweeter than the sounds
+Of clarinet or flute doth cry:
+"What is your name?" The boor looked dazed,
+And "Agathon" replied, amazed.(53)
+
+[Note 53: The superstition is that the name of the future husband
+may thus be discovered.]
+
+X
+
+Tattiana (nurse the project planned)
+By night prepared for sorcery,
+And in the bathroom did command
+To lay two covers secretly.
+But sudden fear assailed Tattiana,
+And I, remembering Svetlana,(54)
+Become alarmed. So never mind!
+I'm not for witchcraft now inclined.
+So she her silken sash unlaced,
+Undressed herself and went to bed
+And soon Lel hovered o'er her head.(55)
+Beneath her downy pillow placed,
+A little virgin mirror peeps.
+'Tis silent all. Tattiana sleeps.
+
+[Note 54: See Note 30.]
+
+[Note 55: Lel, in Slavonic mythology, corresponds to the Morpheus
+of the Latins. The word is evidently connected with the verb
+"leleyat" to fondle or soothe, likewise with our own word
+"to lull."]
+
+XI
+
+A dreadful sleep Tattiana sleeps.
+She dreamt she journeyed o'er a field
+All covered up with snow in heaps,
+By melancholy fogs concealed.
+Amid the snowdrifts which surround
+A stream, by winter's ice unbound,
+Impetuously clove its way
+With boiling torrent dark and gray;
+Two poles together glued by ice,
+A fragile bridge and insecure,
+Spanned the unbridled torrent o'er;
+Beside the thundering abyss
+Tattiana in despair unfeigned
+Rooted unto the spot remained.
+
+XII
+
+As if against obstruction sore
+Tattiana o'er the stream complained;
+To help her to the other shore
+No one appeared to lend a hand.
+But suddenly a snowdrift stirs,
+And what from its recess appears?
+A bristly bear of monstrous size!
+He roars, and "Ah!" Tattiana cries.
+He offers her his murderous paw;
+She nerves herself from her alarm
+And leans upon the monster's arm,
+With footsteps tremulous with awe
+Passes the torrent But alack!
+Bruin is marching at her back!
+
+XIII
+
+She, to turn back her eyes afraid,
+Accelerates her hasty pace,
+But cannot anyhow evade
+Her shaggy myrmidon in chase.
+The bear rolls on with many a grunt:
+A forest now she sees in front
+With fir-trees standing motionless
+In melancholy loveliness,
+Their branches by the snow bowed down.
+Through aspens, limes and birches bare,
+The shining orbs of night appear;
+There is no path; the storm hath strewn
+Both bush and brake, ravine and steep,
+And all in snow is buried deep.
+
+XIV
+
+The wood she enters--bear behind,--
+In snow she sinks up to the knee;
+Now a long branch itself entwined
+Around her neck, now violently
+Away her golden earrings tore;
+Now the sweet little shoes she wore,
+Grown clammy, stick fast in the snow;
+Her handkerchief she loses now;
+No time to pick it up! afraid,
+She hears the bear behind her press,
+Nor dares the skirting of her dress
+For shame lift up the modest maid.
+She runs, the bear upon her trail,
+Until her powers of running fail.
+
+XV
+
+She sank upon the snow. But Bruin
+Adroitly seized and carried her;
+Submissive as if in a swoon,
+She cannot draw a breath or stir.
+He dragged her by a forest road
+Till amid trees a hovel showed,
+By barren snow heaped up and bound,
+A tangled wilderness around.
+Bright blazed the window of the place,
+Within resounded shriek and shout:
+"My chum lives here," Bruin grunts out.
+"Warm yourself here a little space!"
+Straight for the entrance then he made
+And her upon the threshold laid.
+
+XVI
+
+Recovering, Tania gazes round;
+Bear gone--she at the threshold placed;
+Inside clink glasses, cries resound
+As if it were some funeral feast.
+But deeming all this nonsense pure,
+She peeped through a chink of the door.
+What doth she see? Around the board
+Sit many monstrous shapes abhorred.
+A canine face with horns thereon,
+Another with cock's head appeared,
+Here an old witch with hirsute beard,
+There an imperious skeleton;
+A dwarf adorned with tail, again
+A shape half cat and half a crane.
+
+XVII
+
+Yet ghastlier, yet more wonderful,
+A crab upon a spider rides,
+Perched on a goose's neck a skull
+In scarlet cap revolving glides.
+A windmill too a jig performs
+And wildly waves its arms and storms;
+Barking, songs, whistling, laughter coarse,
+The speech of man and tramp of horse.
+But wide Tattiana oped her eyes
+When in that company she saw
+Him who inspired both love and awe,
+The hero we immortalize.
+Oneguine sat the table by
+And viewed the door with cunning eye.
+
+XVIII
+
+All bustle when he makes a sign:
+He drinks, all drink and loudly call;
+He smiles, in laughter all combine;
+He knits his brows--'tis silent all.
+He there is master--that is plain;
+Tattiana courage doth regain
+And grown more curious by far
+Just placed the entrance door ajar.
+The wind rose instantly, blew out
+The fire of the nocturnal lights;
+A trouble fell upon the sprites;
+Oneguine lightning glances shot;
+Furious he from the table rose;
+All arise. To the door he goes.
+
+XIX
+
+Terror assails her. Hastily
+Tattiana would attempt to fly,
+She cannot--then impatiently
+She strains her throat to force a cry--
+She cannot--Eugene oped the door
+And the young girl appeared before
+Those hellish phantoms. Peals arise
+Of frantic laughter, and all eyes
+And hoofs and crooked snouts and paws,
+Tails which a bushy tuft adorns,
+Whiskers and bloody tongues and horns,
+Sharp rows of tushes, bony claws,
+Are turned upon her. All combine
+In one great shout: she's mine! she's mine!
+
+XX
+
+"Mine!" cried Eugene with savage tone.
+The troop of apparitions fled,
+And in the frosty night alone
+Remained with him the youthful maid.
+With tranquil air Oneguine leads
+Tattiana to a corner, bids
+Her on a shaky bench sit down;
+His head sinks slowly, rests upon
+Her shoulder--Olga swiftly came--
+And Lenski followed--a light broke--
+His fist Oneguine fiercely shook
+And gazed around with eyes of flame;
+The unbidden guests he roughly chides--
+Tattiana motionless abides.
+
+XXI
+
+The strife grew furious and Eugene
+Grasped a long knife and instantly
+Struck Lenski dead--across the scene
+Dark shadows thicken--a dread cry
+Was uttered, and the cabin shook--
+Tattiana terrified awoke.
+She gazed around her--it was day.
+Lo! through the frozen windows play
+Aurora's ruddy rays of light--
+The door flew open--Olga came,
+More blooming than the Boreal flame
+And swifter than the swallow's flight.
+"Come," she cried, "sister, tell me e'en
+Whom you in slumber may have seen."
+
+XXII
+
+But she, her sister never heeding,
+With book in hand reclined in bed,
+Page after page continued reading,
+But no reply unto her made.
+Although her book did not contain
+The bard's enthusiastic strain,
+Nor precepts sage nor pictures e'en,
+Yet neither Virgil nor Racine
+Nor Byron, Walter Scott, nor Seneca,
+Nor the _Journal des Modes_, I vouch,
+Ever absorbed a maid so much:
+Its name, my friends, was Martin Zadeka,
+The chief of the Chaldean wise,
+Who dreams expound and prophecies.
+
+XXIII
+
+Brought by a pedlar vagabond
+Unto their solitude one day,
+This monument of thought profound
+Tattiana purchased with a stray
+Tome of "Malvina," and but three(56)
+And a half rubles down gave she;
+Also, to equalise the scales,
+She got a book of nursery tales,
+A grammar, likewise Petriads two,
+Marmontel also, tome the third;
+Tattiana every day conferred
+With Martin Zadeka. In woe
+She consolation thence obtained--
+Inseparable they remained.
+
+[Note 56: "Malvina," a romance by Madame Cottin.]
+
+XXIV
+
+The dream left terror in its train.
+Not knowing its interpretation,
+Tania the meaning would obtain
+Of such a dread hallucination.
+Tattiana to the index flies
+And alphabetically tries
+The words _bear, bridge, fir, darkness, bog,
+Raven, snowstorm, tempest, fog,
+Et cetera_; but nothing showed
+Her Martin Zadeka in aid,
+Though the foul vision promise made
+Of a most mournful episode,
+And many a day thereafter laid
+A load of care upon the maid.
+
+XXV
+
+"But lo! forth from the valleys dun
+With purple hand Aurora leads,
+Swift following in her wake, the sun,"(57)
+And a grand festival proceeds.
+The Larinas were since sunrise
+O'erwhelmed with guests; by families
+The neighbours come, in sledge approach,
+Britzka, kibitka, or in coach.
+Crush and confusion in the hall,
+Latest arrivals' salutations,
+Barking, young ladies' osculations,
+Shouts, laughter, jamming 'gainst the wall,
+Bows and the scrape of many feet,
+Nurses who scream and babes who bleat.
+
+[Note 57: The above three lines are a parody on the turgid
+style of Lomonossoff, a literary man of the second Catherine's
+era.]
+
+XXVI
+
+Bringing his partner corpulent
+Fat Poustiakoff drove to the door;
+Gvozdine, a landlord excellent,
+Oppressor of the wretched poor;
+And the Skatenines, aged pair,
+With all their progeny were there,
+Who from two years to thirty tell;
+Petoushkoff, the provincial swell;
+Bouyanoff too, my cousin, wore(58)
+His wadded coat and cap with peak
+(Surely you know him as I speak);
+And Flianoff, pensioned councillor,
+Rogue and extortioner of yore,
+Now buffoon, glutton, and a bore.
+
+[Note 58: Pushkin calls Bouyanoff his cousin because he is a
+character in the "Dangerous Neighbour," a poem by Vassili
+Pushkin, the poet's uncle.]
+
+XXVII
+
+The family of Kharlikoff,
+Came with Monsieur Triquet, a prig,
+Who arrived lately from Tamboff,
+In spectacles and chestnut wig.
+Like a true Frenchman, couplets wrought
+In Tania's praise in pouch he brought,
+Known unto children perfectly:
+_Reveillez-vouz, belle endormie_.
+Among some ancient ballads thrust,
+He found them in an almanac,
+And the sagacious Triquet back
+To light had brought them from their dust,
+Whilst he "belle Nina" had the face
+By "belle Tattiana" to replace.
+
+XXVIII
+
+Lo! from the nearest barrack came,
+Of old maids the divinity,
+And comfort of each country dame,
+The captain of a company.
+He enters. Ah! good news to-day!
+The military band will play.
+The colonel sent it. Oh! delight!
+So there will be a dance to-night.
+Girls in anticipation skip!
+But dinner-time comes. Two and two
+They hand in hand to table go.
+The maids beside Tattiana keep--
+Men opposite. The cross they sign
+And chattering loud sit down to dine.
+
+XXIX
+
+Ceased for a space all chattering.
+Jaws are at work. On every side
+Plates, knives and forks are clattering
+And ringing wine-glasses are plied.
+But by degrees the crowd begin
+To raise a clamour and a din:
+They laugh, they argue, and they bawl,
+They shout and no one lists at all.
+The doors swing open: Lenski makes
+His entrance with Oneguine. "Ah!
+At last the author!" cries Mamma.
+The guests make room; aside each takes
+His chair, plate, knife and fork in haste;
+The friends are called and quickly placed.
+
+XXX
+
+Right opposite Tattiana placed,
+She, than the morning moon more pale,
+More timid than a doe long chased,
+Lifts not her eyes which swimming fail.
+Anew the flames of passion start
+Within her; she is sick at heart;
+The two friends' compliments she hears
+Not, and a flood of bitter tears
+With effort she restrains. Well nigh
+The poor girl fell into a faint,
+But strength of mind and self-restraint
+Prevailed at last. She in reply
+Said something in an undertone
+And at the table sat her down.
+
+XXXI
+
+To tragedy, the fainting fit,
+And female tears hysterical,
+Oneguine could not now submit,
+For long he had endured them all.
+Our misanthrope was full of ire,
+At a great feast against desire,
+And marking Tania's agitation,
+Cast down his eyes in trepidation
+And sulked in silent indignation;
+Swearing how Lenski he would rile,
+Avenge himself in proper style.
+Triumphant by anticipation,
+Caricatures he now designed
+Of all the guests within his mind.
+
+XXXII
+
+Certainly not Eugene alone
+Tattiana's trouble might have spied,
+But that the eyes of every one
+By a rich pie were occupied--
+Unhappily too salt by far;
+And that a bottle sealed with tar
+Appeared, Don's effervescing boast,(59)
+Between the blanc-mange and the roast;
+Behind, of glasses an array,
+Tall, slender, like thy form designed,
+Zizi, thou mirror of my mind,
+Fair object of my guileless lay,
+Seductive cup of love, whose flow
+Made me so tipsy long ago!
+
+[Note 59: The _Donskoe Champanskoe_ is a species of sparkling wine
+manufactured in the vicinity of the river Don.]
+
+XXXIII
+
+From the moist cork the bottle freed
+With loud explosion, the bright wine
+Hissed forth. With serious air indeed,
+Long tortured by his lay divine,
+Triquet arose, and for the bard
+The company deep silence guard.
+Tania well nigh expired when he
+Turned to her and discordantly
+Intoned it, manuscript in hand.
+Voices and hands applaud, and she
+Must bow in common courtesy;
+The poet, modest though so grand,
+Drank to her health in the first place,
+Then handed her the song with grace.
+
+XXXIV
+
+Congratulations, toasts resound,
+Tattiana thanks to all returned,
+But, when Oneguine's turn came round,
+The maiden's weary eye which yearned,
+Her agitation and distress
+Aroused in him some tenderness.
+He bowed to her nor silence broke,
+But somehow there shone in his look
+The witching light of sympathy;
+I know not if his heart felt pain
+Or if he meant to flirt again,
+From habit or maliciously,
+But kindness from his eye had beamed
+And to revive Tattiana seemed.
+
+XXXV
+
+The chairs are thrust back with a roar,
+The crowd unto the drawing-room speeds,
+As bees who leave their dainty store
+And seek in buzzing swarms the meads.
+Contented and with victuals stored,
+Neighbour by neighbour sat and snored,
+Matrons unto the fireplace go,
+Maids in the corner whisper low;
+Behold! green tables are brought forth,
+And testy gamesters do engage
+In boston and the game of age,
+Ombre, and whist all others worth:
+A strong resemblance these possess--
+All sons of mental weariness.
+
+XXXVI
+
+Eight rubbers were already played,
+Eight times the heroes of the fight
+Change of position had essayed,
+When tea was brought. 'Tis my delight
+Time to denote by dinner, tea,
+And supper. In the country we
+Can count the time without much fuss--
+The stomach doth admonish us.
+And, by the way, I here assert
+That for that matter in my verse
+As many dinners I rehearse,
+As oft to meat and drink advert,
+As thou, great Homer, didst of yore,
+Whom thirty centuries adore.
+
+XXXVII
+
+I will with thy divinity
+Contend with knife and fork and platter,
+But grant with magnanimity
+I'm beaten in another matter;
+Thy heroes, sanguinary wights,
+Also thy rough-and-tumble fights,
+Thy Venus and thy Jupiter,
+More advantageously appear
+Than cold Oneguine's oddities,
+The aspect of a landscape drear.
+Or e'en Istomina, my dear,
+And fashion's gay frivolities;
+But my Tattiana, on my soul,
+Is sweeter than thy Helen foul.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+No one the contrary will urge,
+Though for his Helen Menelaus
+Again a century should scourge
+Us, and like Trojan warriors slay us;
+Though around honoured Priam's throne
+Troy's sages should in concert own
+Once more, when she appeared in sight,
+Paris and Menelaus right.
+But as to fighting--'twill appear!
+For patience, reader, I must plead!
+A little farther please to read
+And be not in advance severe.
+There'll be a fight. I do not lie.
+My word of honour given have I.
+
+XXXIX
+
+The tea, as I remarked, appeared,
+But scarce had maids their saucers ta'en
+When in the grand saloon was heard
+Of bassoons and of flutes the strain.
+His soul by crash of music fired,
+His tea with rum no more desired,
+The Paris of those country parts
+To Olga Petoushkova darts:
+To Tania Lenski; Kharlikova,
+A marriageable maid matured,
+The poet from Tamboff secured,
+Bouyanoff whisked off Poustiakova.
+All to the grand saloon are gone--
+The ball in all its splendour shone.
+
+XL
+
+I tried when I began this tale,
+(See the first canto if ye will),
+A ball in Peter's capital,
+To sketch ye in Albano's style.(60)
+But by fantastic dreams distraught,
+My memory wandered wide and sought
+The feet of my dear lady friends.
+O feet, where'er your path extends
+I long enough deceived have erred.
+The perfidies I recollect
+Should make me much more circumspect,
+Reform me both in deed and word,
+And this fifth canto ought to be
+From such digressions wholly free.
+
+[Note 60: Francesco Albano, a celebrated painter, styled the "Anacreon
+of Painting," was born at Bologna 1578, and died in the year 1666.]
+
+XLI
+
+The whirlwind of the waltz sweeps by,
+Undeviating and insane
+As giddy youth's hilarity--
+Pair after pair the race sustain.
+The moment for revenge, meanwhile,
+Espying, Eugene with a smile
+Approaches Olga and the pair
+Amid the company career.
+Soon the maid on a chair he seats,
+Begins to talk of this and that,
+But when two minutes she had sat,
+Again the giddy waltz repeats.
+All are amazed; but Lenski he
+Scarce credits what his eyes can see.
+
+XLII
+
+Hark! the mazurka. In times past,
+When the mazurka used to peal,
+All rattled in the ball-room vast,
+The parquet cracked beneath the heel,
+And jolting jarred the window-frames.
+'Tis not so now. Like gentle dames
+We glide along a floor of wax.
+However, the mazurka lacks
+Nought of its charms original
+In country towns, where still it keeps
+Its stamping, capers and high leaps.
+Fashion is there immutable,
+Who tyrannizes us with ease,
+Of modern Russians the disease.
+
+XLIII
+
+Bouyanoff, wrathful cousin mine,
+Unto the hero of this lay
+Olga and Tania led. Malign,
+Oneguine Olga bore away.
+Gliding in negligent career,
+He bending whispered in her ear
+Some madrigal not worth a rush,
+And pressed her hand--the crimson blush
+Upon her cheek by adulation
+Grew brighter still. But Lenski hath
+Seen all, beside himself with wrath,
+And hot with jealous indignation,
+Till the mazurka's close he stays,
+Her hand for the cotillon prays.
+
+XLIV
+
+She fears she cannot.--Cannot? Why?--
+She promised Eugene, or she would
+With great delight.--O God on high!
+Heard he the truth? And thus she could--
+And can it be? But late a child
+And now a fickle flirt and wild,
+Cunning already to display
+And well-instructed to betray!
+Lenski the stroke could not sustain,
+At womankind he growled a curse,
+Departed, ordered out his horse
+And galloped home. But pistols twain,
+A pair of bullets--nought beside--
+His fate shall presently decide.
+
+
+END OF CANTO THE FIFTH
+
+
+
+CANTO THE SIXTH
+
+The Duel
+
+'La, sotto giorni nubilosi e brevi,
+Nasce una gente a cui 'l morir non duole.'
+                                   Petrarch
+
+Canto The Sixth
+
+[Mikhailovskoe, 1826: the two final stanzas were, however,
+written at Moscow.]
+
+I
+
+Having remarked Vladimir's flight,
+Oneguine, bored to death again,
+By Olga stood, dejected quite
+And satisfied with vengeance ta'en.
+Olga began to long likewise
+For Lenski, sought him with her eyes,
+And endless the cotillon seemed
+As if some troubled dream she dreamed.
+'Tis done. To supper they proceed.
+Bedding is laid out and to all
+Assigned a lodging, from the hall(61)
+Up to the attic, and all need
+Tranquil repose. Eugene alone
+To pass the night at home hath gone.
+
+[Note 61: Hospitality is a national virtue of the Russians. On
+festal occasions in the country the whole party is usually
+accommodated for the night, or indeed for as many nights
+as desired, within the house of the entertainer. This of
+course is rendered necessary by the great distances which
+separate the residences of the gentry. Still, the alacrity with
+which a Russian hostess will turn her house topsy-turvy for
+the accommodation of forty or fifty guests would somewhat
+astonish the mistress of a modern Belgravian mansion.]
+
+II
+
+All slumber. In the drawing-room
+Loud snores the cumbrous Poustiakoff
+With better half as cumbersome;
+Gvozdine, Bouyanoff, Petoushkoff
+And Flianoff, somewhat indisposed,
+On chairs in the saloon reposed,
+Whilst on the floor Monsieur Triquet
+In jersey and in nightcap lay.
+In Olga's and Tattiana's rooms
+Lay all the girls by sleep embraced,
+Except one by the window placed
+Whom pale Diana's ray illumes--
+My poor Tattiana cannot sleep
+But stares into the darkness deep.
+
+III
+
+His visit she had not awaited,
+His momentary loving glance
+Her inmost soul had penetrated,
+And his strange conduct at the dance
+With Olga; nor of this appeared
+An explanation: she was scared,
+Alarmed by jealous agonies:
+A hand of ice appeared to seize(62)
+Her heart: it seemed a darksome pit
+Beneath her roaring opened wide:
+"I shall expire," Tattiana cried,
+"But death from him will be delight.
+I murmur not! Why mournfulness?
+He _cannot_ give me happiness."
+
+[Note 62: There must be a peculiar appropriateness in this expression
+as descriptive of the sensation of extreme cold. Mr. Wallace
+makes use of an identical phrase in describing an occasion
+when he was frostbitten whilst sledging in Russia. He says
+(vol. i. p. 33): "My fur cloak flew open, the cold seemed to
+_grasp me in the region of the heart_, and I fell insensible."]
+
+IV
+
+Haste, haste thy lagging pace, my story!
+A new acquaintance we must scan.
+There dwells five versts from Krasnogory,
+Vladimir's property, a man
+Who thrives this moment as I write,
+A philosophic anchorite:
+Zaretski, once a bully bold,
+A gambling troop when he controlled,
+Chief rascal, pot-house president,
+Now of a family the head,
+Simple and kindly and unwed,
+True friend, landlord benevolent,
+Yea! and a man of honour, lo!
+How perfect doth our epoch grow!
+
+V
+
+Time was the flattering voice of fame,
+His ruffian bravery adored,
+And true, his pistol's faultless aim
+An ace at fifteen paces bored.
+But I must add to what I write
+That, tipsy once in actual fight,
+He from his Kalmuck horse did leap
+In mud and mire to wallow deep,
+Drunk as a fly; and thus the French
+A valuable hostage gained,
+A modern Regulus unchained,
+Who to surrender did not blench
+That every morn at Verrey's cost
+Three flasks of wine he might exhaust.
+
+VI
+
+Time was, his raillery was gay,
+He loved the simpleton to mock,
+To make wise men the idiot play
+Openly or 'neath decent cloak.
+Yet sometimes this or that deceit
+Encountered punishment complete,
+And sometimes into snares as well
+Himself just like a greenhorn fell.
+He could in disputation shine
+With pungent or obtuse retort,
+At times to silence would resort,
+At times talk nonsense with design;
+Quarrels among young friends he bred
+And to the field of honour led;
+
+VII
+
+Or reconciled them, it may be,
+And all the three to breakfast went;
+Then he'd malign them secretly
+With jest and gossip gaily blent.
+_Sed alia tempora_. And bravery
+(Like love, another sort of knavery!)
+Diminishes as years decline.
+But, as I said, Zaretski mine
+Beneath acacias, cherry-trees,
+From storms protection having sought,
+Lived as a really wise man ought,
+Like Horace, planted cabbages,
+Both ducks and geese in plenty bred
+And lessons to his children read.
+
+VIII
+
+He was no fool, and Eugene mine,
+To friendship making no pretence,
+Admired his judgment, which was fine,
+Pervaded with much common sense.
+He usually was glad to see
+The man and liked his company,
+So, when he came next day to call,
+Was not surprised thereby at all.
+But, after mutual compliments,
+Zaretski with a knowing grin,
+Ere conversation could begin,
+The epistle from the bard presents.
+Oneguine to the window went
+And scanned in silence its content.
+
+IX
+
+It was a cheery, generous
+Cartel, or challenge to a fight,
+Whereto in language courteous
+Lenski his comrade did invite.
+Oneguine, by first impulse moved,
+Turned and replied as it behoved,
+Curtly announcing for the fray
+That he was "ready any day."
+Zaretski rose, nor would explain,
+He cared no longer there to stay,
+Had much to do at home that day,
+And so departed. But Eugene,
+The matter by his conscience tried,
+Was with himself dissatisfied.
+
+X
+
+In fact, the subject analysed,
+Within that secret court discussed,
+In much his conduct stigmatized;
+For, from the outset, 'twas unjust
+To jest as he had done last eve,
+A timid, shrinking love to grieve.
+And ought he not to disregard
+The poet's madness? for 'tis hard
+At eighteen not to play the fool!
+Sincerely loving him, Eugene
+Assuredly should not have been
+Conventionality's dull tool--
+Not a mere hot, pugnacious boy,
+But man of sense and probity.
+
+XI
+
+He might his motives have narrated,
+Not bristled up like a wild beast,
+He ought to have conciliated
+That youthful heart--"But, now at least,
+The opportunity is flown.
+Besides, a duellist well-known
+Hath mixed himself in the affair,
+Malicious and a slanderer.
+Undoubtedly, disdain alone
+Should recompense his idle jeers,
+But fools--their calumnies and sneers"--
+Behold! the world's opinion!(63)
+Our idol, Honour's motive force,
+Round which revolves the universe.
+
+[Note 63: A line of Griboyedoff's. (Woe from Wit.)]
+
+XII
+
+Impatient, boiling o'er with wrath,
+The bard his answer waits at home,
+But lo! his braggart neighbour hath
+Triumphant with the answer come.
+Now for the jealous youth what joy!
+He feared the criminal might try
+To treat the matter as a jest,
+Use subterfuge, and thus his breast
+From the dread pistol turn away.
+But now all doubt was set aside,
+Unto the windmill he must ride
+To-morrow before break of day,
+To cock the pistol; barrel bend
+On thigh or temple, friend on friend.
+
+XIII
+
+Resolved the flirt to cast away,
+The foaming Lenski would refuse,
+To see his Olga ere the fray--
+His watch, the sun in turn he views--
+Finally tost his arms in air
+And lo! he is already there!
+He deemed his coming would inspire
+Olga with trepidation dire.
+He was deceived. Just as before
+The miserable bard to meet,
+As hope uncertain and as sweet,
+Olga ran skipping from the door.
+She was as heedless and as gay--
+Well! just as she was yesterday.
+
+XIV
+
+"Why did you leave last night so soon?"
+Was the first question Olga made,
+Lenski, into confusion thrown,
+All silently hung down his head.
+Jealousy and vexation took
+To flight before her radiant look,
+Before such fond simplicity
+And mental elasticity.
+He eyed her with a fond concern,
+Perceived that he was still beloved,
+Already by repentance moved
+To ask forgiveness seemed to yearn;
+But trembles, words he cannot find,
+Delighted, almost sane in mind.
+
+XV
+
+But once more pensive and distressed
+Beside his Olga doth he grieve,
+Nor enough strength of mind possessed
+To mention the foregoing eve,
+He mused: "I will her saviour be!
+With ardent sighs and flattery
+The vile seducer shall not dare
+The freshness of her heart impair,
+Nor shall the caterpillar come
+The lily's stem to eat away,
+Nor shall the bud of yesterday
+Perish when half disclosed its bloom!"--
+All this, my friends, translate aright:
+"I with my friend intend to fight!"
+
+XVI
+
+If he had only known the wound
+Which rankled in Tattiana's breast,
+And if Tattiana mine had found--
+If the poor maiden could have guessed
+That the two friends with morning's light
+Above the yawning grave would fight,--
+Ah! it may be, affection true
+Had reconciled the pair anew!
+But of this love, e'en casually,
+As yet none had discovered aught;
+Eugene of course related nought,
+Tattiana suffered secretly;
+Her nurse, who could have made a guess,
+Was famous for thick-headedness.
+
+XVII
+
+Lenski that eve in thought immersed,
+Now gloomy seemed and cheerful now,
+But he who by the Muse was nursed
+Is ever thus. With frowning brow
+To the pianoforte he moves
+And various chords upon it proves,
+Then, eyeing Olga, whispers low:
+"I'm happy, say, is it not so?"--
+But it grew late; he must not stay;
+Heavy his heart with anguish grew;
+To the young girl he said adieu,
+As it were, tore himself away.
+Gazing into his face, she said:
+"What ails thee?"--"Nothing."--He is fled.
+
+XVIII
+
+At home arriving he addressed
+His care unto his pistols' plight,
+Replaced them in their box, undressed
+And Schiller read by candlelight.
+But one thought only filled his mind,
+His mournful heart no peace could find,
+Olga he sees before his eyes
+Miraculously fair arise,
+Vladimir closes up his book,
+And grasps a pen: his verse, albeit
+With lovers' rubbish filled, was neat
+And flowed harmoniously. He took
+And spouted it with lyric fire--
+Like D[elvig] when dinner doth inspire.
+
+XIX
+
+Destiny hath preserved his lay.
+I have it. Lo! the very thing!
+"Oh! whither have ye winged your way,
+Ye golden days of my young spring?
+What will the coming dawn reveal?
+In vain my anxious eyes appeal;
+In mist profound all yet is hid.
+So be it! Just the laws which bid
+The fatal bullet penetrate,
+Or innocently past me fly.
+Good governs all! The hour draws nigh
+Of life or death predestinate.
+Blest be the labours of the light,
+And blest the shadows of the night.
+
+XX
+
+"To-morrow's dawn will glimmer gray,
+Bright day will then begin to burn,
+But the dark sepulchre I may
+Have entered never to return.
+The memory of the bard, a dream,
+Will be absorbed by Lethe's stream;
+Men will forget me, but my urn
+To visit, lovely maid, return,
+O'er my remains to drop a tear,
+And think: here lies who loved me well,
+For consecrate to me he fell
+In the dawn of existence drear.
+Maid whom my heart desires alone,
+Approach, approach; I am thine own."
+
+XXI
+
+Thus in a style _obscure_ and _stale_,(64)
+He wrote ('tis the romantic style,
+Though of romance therein I fail
+To see aught--never mind meanwhile)
+And about dawn upon his breast
+His weary head declined at rest,
+For o'er a word to fashion known,
+"Ideal," he had drowsy grown.
+But scarce had sleep's soft witchery
+Subdued him, when his neighbour stept
+Into the chamber where he slept
+And wakened him with the loud cry:
+"'Tis time to get up! Seven doth strike.
+Oneguine waits on us, 'tis like."
+
+[Note 64: The fact of the above words being italicised suggests
+the idea that the poet is here firing a Parthian shot at some
+unfriendly critic.]
+
+XXII
+
+He was in error; for Eugene
+Was sleeping then a sleep like death;
+The pall of night was growing thin,
+To Lucifer the cock must breathe
+His song, when still he slumbered deep,
+The sun had mounted high his steep,
+A passing snowstorm wreathed away
+With pallid light, but Eugene lay
+Upon his couch insensibly;
+Slumber still o'er him lingering flies.
+But finally he oped his eyes
+And turned aside the drapery;
+He gazed upon the clock which showed
+He long should have been on the road.
+
+XXIII
+
+He rings in haste; in haste arrives
+His Frenchman, good Monsieur Guillot,
+Who dressing-gown and slippers gives
+And linen on him doth bestow.
+Dressing as quickly as he can,
+Eugene directs the trusty man
+To accompany him and to escort
+A box of terrible import.
+Harnessed the rapid sledge arrived:
+He enters: to the mill he drives:
+Descends, the order Guillot gives,
+The fatal tubes Lepage contrived(65)
+To bring behind: the triple steeds
+To two young oaks the coachman leads.
+
+[Note 65: Lepage--a celebrated gunmaker of former days.]
+
+XXIV
+
+Lenski the foeman's apparition
+Leaning against the dam expects,
+Zaretski, village mechanician,
+In the meantime the mill inspects.
+Oneguine his excuses says;
+"But," cried Zaretski in amaze,
+"Your second you have left behind!"
+A duellist of classic mind,
+Method was dear unto his heart
+He would not that a man ye slay
+In a lax or informal way,
+But followed the strict rules of art,
+And ancient usages observed
+(For which our praise he hath deserved).
+
+XXV
+
+"My second!" cried in turn Eugene,
+"Behold my friend Monsieur Guillot;
+To this arrangement can be seen,
+No obstacle of which I know.
+Although unknown to fame mayhap,
+He's a straightforward little chap."
+Zaretski bit his lip in wrath,
+But to Vladimir Eugene saith:
+"Shall we commence?"--"Let it be so,"
+Lenski replied, and soon they be
+Behind the mill. Meantime ye see
+Zaretski and Monsieur Guillot
+In consultation stand aside--
+The foes with downcast eyes abide.
+
+XXVI
+
+Foes! Is it long since friendship rent
+Asunder was and hate prepared?
+Since leisure was together spent,
+Meals, secrets, occupations shared?
+Now, like hereditary foes,
+Malignant fury they disclose,
+As in some frenzied dream of fear
+These friends cold-bloodedly draw near
+Mutual destruction to contrive.
+Cannot they amicably smile
+Ere crimson stains their hands defile,
+Depart in peace and friendly live?
+But fashionable hatred's flame
+Trembles at artificial shame.
+
+XXVII
+
+The shining pistols are uncased,
+The mallet loud the ramrod strikes,
+Bullets are down the barrels pressed,
+For the first time the hammer clicks.
+Lo! poured in a thin gray cascade,
+The powder in the pan is laid,
+The sharp flint, screwed securely on,
+Is cocked once more. Uneasy grown,
+Guillot behind a pollard stood;
+Aside the foes their mantles threw,
+Zaretski paces thirty-two
+Measured with great exactitude.
+At each extreme one takes his stand,
+A loaded pistol in his hand.
+
+XXVIII
+
+"Advance!"--
+          Indifferent and sedate,
+The foes, as yet not taking aim,
+With measured step and even gait
+Athwart the snow four paces came--
+Four deadly paces do they span;
+Oneguine slowly then began
+To raise his pistol to his eye,
+Though he advanced unceasingly.
+And lo! five paces more they pass,
+And Lenski, closing his left eye,
+Took aim--but as immediately
+Oneguine fired--Alas! alas!
+The poet's hour hath sounded--See!
+He drops his pistol silently.
+
+XXIX
+
+He on his bosom gently placed
+His hand, and fell. His clouded eye
+Not agony, but death expressed.
+So from the mountain lazily
+The avalanche of snow first bends,
+Then glittering in the sun descends.
+The cold sweat bursting from his brow,
+To the youth Eugene hurried now--
+Gazed on him, called him. Useless care!
+He was no more! The youthful bard
+For evermore had disappeared.
+The storm was hushed. The blossom fair
+Was withered ere the morning light--
+The altar flame was quenched in night.
+
+XXX
+
+Tranquil he lay, and strange to view
+The peace which on his forehead beamed,
+His breast was riddled through and through,
+The blood gushed from the wound and steamed
+Ere this but one brief moment beat
+That heart with inspiration sweet
+And enmity and hope and love--
+The blood boiled and the passions strove.
+Now, as in a deserted house,
+All dark and silent hath become;
+The inmate is for ever dumb,
+The windows whitened, shutters close--
+Whither departed is the host?
+God knows! The very trace is lost.
+
+XXXI
+
+'Tis sweet the foe to aggravate
+With epigrams impertinent,
+Sweet to behold him obstinate,
+His butting horns in anger bent,
+The glass unwittingly inspect
+And blush to own himself reflect.
+Sweeter it is, my friends, if he
+Howl like a dolt: 'tis meant for me!
+But sweeter still it is to arrange
+For him an honourable grave,
+At his pale brow a shot to have,
+Placed at the customary range;
+But home his body to despatch
+Can scarce in sweetness be a match.
+
+XXXII
+
+Well, if your pistol ball by chance
+The comrade of your youth should strike,
+Who by a haughty word or glance
+Or any trifle else ye like
+You o'er your wine insulted hath--
+Or even overcome by wrath
+Scornfully challenged you afield--
+Tell me, of sentiments concealed
+Which in your spirit dominates,
+When motionless your gaze beneath
+He lies, upon his forehead death,
+And slowly life coagulates--
+When deaf and silent he doth lie
+Heedless of your despairing cry?
+
+XXXIII
+
+Eugene, his pistol yet in hand
+And with remorseful anguish filled,
+Gazing on Lenski's corse did stand--
+Zaretski shouted: "Why, he's killed!"--
+Killed! at this dreadful exclamation
+Oneguine went with trepidation
+And the attendants called in haste.
+Most carefully Zaretski placed
+Within his sledge the stiffened corse,
+And hurried home his awful freight.
+Conscious of death approximate,
+Loud paws the earth each panting horse,
+His bit with foam besprinkled o'er,
+And homeward like an arrow tore.
+
+XXXIV
+
+My friends, the poet ye regret!
+When hope's delightful flower but bloomed
+In bud of promise incomplete,
+The manly toga scarce assumed,
+He perished. Where his troubled dreams,
+And where the admirable streams
+Of youthful impulse, reverie,
+Tender and elevated, free?
+And where tempestuous love's desires,
+The thirst of knowledge and of fame,
+Horror of sinfulness and shame,
+Imagination's sacred fires,
+Ye shadows of a life more high,
+Ye dreams of heavenly poesy?
+
+XXXV
+
+Perchance to benefit mankind,
+Or but for fame he saw the light;
+His lyre, to silence now consigned,
+Resounding through all ages might
+Have echoed to eternity.
+With worldly honours, it may be,
+Fortune the poet had repaid.
+It may be that his martyred shade
+Carried a truth divine away;
+That, for the century designed,
+Had perished a creative mind,
+And past the threshold of decay,
+He ne'er shall hear Time's eulogy,
+The blessings of humanity.
+
+XXXVI
+
+Or, it may be, the bard had passed
+A life in common with the rest;
+Vanished his youthful years at last,
+The fire extinguished in his breast,
+In many things had changed his life--
+The Muse abandoned, ta'en a wife,
+Inhabited the country, clad
+In dressing-gown, a cuckold glad:
+A life of fact, not fiction, led--
+At forty suffered from the gout,
+Eaten, drunk, gossiped and grown stout:
+And finally, upon his bed
+Had finished life amid his sons,
+Doctors and women, sobs and groans.
+
+XXXVII
+
+But, howsoe'er his lot were cast,
+Alas! the youthful lover slain,
+Poetical enthusiast,
+A friendly hand thy life hath ta'en!
+There is a spot the village near
+Where dwelt the Muses' worshipper,
+Two pines have joined their tangled roots,
+A rivulet beneath them shoots
+Its waters to the neighbouring vale.
+There the tired ploughman loves to lie,
+The reaping girls approach and ply
+Within its wave the sounding pail,
+And by that shady rivulet
+A simple tombstone hath been set.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+There, when the rains of spring we mark
+Upon the meadows showering,
+The shepherd plaits his shoe of bark,(66)
+Of Volga fishermen doth sing,
+And the young damsel from the town,
+For summer to the country flown,
+Whene'er across the plain at speed
+Alone she gallops on her steed,
+Stops at the tomb in passing by;
+The tightened leathern rein she draws,
+Aside she casts her veil of gauze
+And reads with rapid eager eye
+The simple epitaph--a tear
+Doth in her gentle eye appear.
+
+[Note 66: In Russia and other northern countries rude shoes are
+made of the inner bark of the lime tree.]
+
+XXXIX
+
+And meditative from the spot
+She leisurely away doth ride,
+Spite of herself with Lenski's lot
+Longtime her mind is occupied.
+She muses: "What was Olga's fate?
+Longtime was her heart desolate
+Or did her tears soon cease to flow?
+And where may be her sister now?
+Where is the outlaw, banned by men,
+Of fashionable dames the foe,
+The misanthrope of gloomy brow,
+By whom the youthful bard was slain?"--
+In time I'll give ye without fail
+A true account and in detail.
+
+XL
+
+But not at present, though sincerely
+I on my chosen hero dote;
+Though I'll return to him right early,
+Just at this moment I cannot.
+Years have inclined me to stern prose,
+Years to light rhyme themselves oppose,
+And now, I mournfully confess,
+In rhyming I show laziness.
+As once, to fill the rapid page
+My pen no longer finds delight,
+Other and colder thoughts affright,
+Sterner solicitudes engage,
+In worldly din or solitude
+Upon my visions such intrude.
+
+XLI
+
+Fresh aspirations I have known,
+I am acquainted with fresh care,
+Hopeless are all the first, I own,
+Yet still remains the old despair.
+Illusions, dream, where, where your sweetness?
+Where youth (the proper rhyme is fleetness)?
+And is it true her garland bright
+At last is shrunk and withered quite?
+And is it true and not a jest,
+Not even a poetic phrase,
+That vanished are my youthful days
+(This joking I used to protest),
+Never for me to reappear--
+That soon I reach my thirtieth year?
+
+XLII
+
+And so my noon hath come! If so,
+I must resign myself, in sooth;
+Yet let us part in friendship, O
+My frivolous and jolly youth.
+I thank thee for thy joyfulness,
+Love's tender transports and distress,
+For riot, frolics, mighty feeds,
+And all that from thy hand proceeds--
+I thank thee. In thy company,
+With tumult or contentment still
+Of thy delights I drank my fill,
+Enough! with tranquil spirit I
+Commence a new career in life
+And rest from bygone days of strife.
+
+XLIII
+
+But pause! Thou calm retreats, farewell,
+Where my days in the wilderness
+Of languor and of love did tell
+And contemplative dreaminess;
+And thou, youth's early inspiration,
+Invigorate imagination
+And spur my spirit's torpid mood!
+Fly frequent to my solitude,
+Let not the poet's spirit freeze,
+Grow harsh and cruel, dead and dry,
+Eventually petrify
+In the world's mortal revelries,
+Amid the soulless sons of pride
+And glittering simpletons beside;
+
+XLIV
+
+Amid sly, pusillanimous
+Spoiled children most degenerate
+And tiresome rogues ridiculous
+And stupid censors passionate;
+Amid coquettes who pray to God
+And abject slaves who kiss the rod;
+In haunts of fashion where each day
+All with urbanity betray,
+Where harsh frivolity proclaims
+Its cold unfeeling sentences;
+Amid the awful emptiness
+Of conversation, thought and aims--
+In that morass where you and I
+Wallow, my friends, in company!
+
+
+END OF CANTO THE SIXTH
+
+
+
+CANTO THE SEVENTH
+
+Moscow
+
+Moscow, Russia's darling daughter,
+Where thine equal shall we find?'
+                             Dmitrieff
+
+Who can help loving mother Moscow?
+                   Baratynski (Feasts)
+
+A journey to Moscow! To see the world!
+Where better?
+              Where man is not.
+            Griboyedoff (Woe from Wit)
+
+
+Canto The Seventh
+
+[Written 1827-1828 at Moscow, Mikhailovskoe, St. Petersburg
+and Malinniki.]
+
+I
+
+Impelled by Spring's dissolving beams,
+The snows from off the hills around
+Descended swift in turbid streams
+And flooded all the level ground.
+A smile from slumbering nature clear
+Did seem to greet the youthful year;
+The heavens shone in deeper blue,
+The woods, still naked to the view,
+Seemed in a haze of green embowered.
+The bee forth from his cell of wax
+Flew to collect his rural tax;
+The valleys dried and gaily flowered;
+Herds low, and under night's dark veil
+Already sings the nightingale.
+
+II
+
+Mournful is thine approach to me,
+O Spring, thou chosen time of love!
+What agitation languidly
+My spirit and my blood doth move,
+What sad emotions o'er me steal
+When first upon my cheek I feel
+The breath of Spring again renewed,
+Secure in rural quietude--
+Or, strange to me is happiness?
+Do all things which to mirth incline.
+And make a dark existence shine
+Inflict annoyance and distress
+Upon a soul inert and cloyed?--
+And is all light within destroyed?
+
+III
+
+Or, heedless of the leaves' return
+Which Autumn late to earth consigned,
+Do we alone our losses mourn
+Of which the rustling woods remind?
+Or, when anew all Nature teems,
+Do we foresee in troubled dreams
+The coming of life's Autumn drear.
+For which no springtime shall appear?
+Or, it may be, we inly seek,
+Wafted upon poetic wing,
+Some other long-departed Spring,
+Whose memories make the heart beat quick
+With thoughts of a far distant land,
+Of a strange night when the moon and--
+
+IV
+
+'Tis now the season! Idlers all,
+Epicurean philosophers,
+Ye men of fashion cynical,
+Of Levshin's school ye followers,(67)
+Priams of country populations
+And dames of fine organisations,
+Spring summons you to her green bowers,
+'Tis the warm time of labour, flowers;
+The time for mystic strolls which late
+Into the starry night extend.
+Quick to the country let us wend
+In vehicles surcharged with freight;
+In coach or post-cart duly placed
+Beyond the city-barriers haste.
+
+[Note 67: Levshin--a contemporary writer on political economy.]
+
+V
+
+Thou also, reader generous,
+The chaise long ordered please employ,
+Abandon cities riotous,
+Which in the winter were a joy:
+The Muse capricious let us coax,
+Go hear the rustling of the oaks
+Beside a nameless rivulet,
+Where in the country Eugene yet,
+An idle anchorite and sad,
+A while ago the winter spent,
+Near young Tattiana resident,
+My pretty self-deceiving maid--
+No more the village knows his face,
+For there he left a mournful trace.
+
+VI
+
+Let us proceed unto a rill,
+Which in a hilly neighbourhood
+Seeks, winding amid meadows still,
+The river through the linden wood.
+The nightingale there all night long,
+Spring's paramour, pours forth her song
+The fountain brawls, sweetbriers bloom,
+And lo! where lies a marble tomb
+And two old pines their branches spread--
+"_Vladimir Lenski lies beneath,
+Who early died a gallant death_,"
+Thereon the passing traveller read:
+"_The date, his fleeting years how long--
+Repose in peace, thou child of song_."
+
+VII
+
+Time was, the breath of early dawn
+Would agitate a mystic wreath
+Hung on a pine branch earthward drawn
+Above the humble urn of death.
+Time was, two maidens from their home
+At eventide would hither come,
+And, by the light the moonbeams gave,
+Lament, embrace upon that grave.
+But now--none heeds the monument
+Of woe: effaced the pathway now:
+There is no wreath upon the bough:
+Alone beside it, gray and bent,
+As formerly the shepherd sits
+And his poor basten sandal knits.
+
+VIII
+
+My poor Vladimir, bitter tears
+Thee but a little space bewept,
+Faithless, alas! thy maid appears,
+Nor true unto her sorrow kept.
+Another could her heart engage,
+Another could her woe assuage
+By flattery and lover's art--
+A lancer captivates her heart!
+A lancer her soul dotes upon:
+Before the altar, lo! the pair,
+Mark ye with what a modest air
+She bows her head beneath the crown;(68)
+Behold her downcast eyes which glow,
+Her lips where light smiles come and go!
+
+[Note 68: The crown used in celebrating marriages in Russia
+according to the forms of the Eastern Church. See Note 28.]
+
+IX
+
+My poor Vladimir! In the tomb,
+Passed into dull eternity,
+Was the sad poet filled with gloom,
+Hearing the fatal perfidy?
+Or, beyond Lethe lulled to rest,
+Hath the bard, by indifference blest,
+Callous to all on earth become--
+Is the world to him sealed and dumb?
+The same unmoved oblivion
+On us beyond the grave attends,
+The voice of lovers, foes and friends,
+Dies suddenly: of heirs alone
+Remains on earth the unseemly rage,
+Whilst struggling for the heritage.
+
+X
+
+Soon Olga's accents shrill resound
+No longer through her former home;
+The lancer, to his calling bound,
+Back to his regiment must roam.
+The aged mother, bathed in tears,
+Distracted by her grief appears
+When the hour came to bid good-bye--
+But my Tattiana's eyes were dry.
+Only her countenance assumed
+A deadly pallor, air distressed;
+When all around the entrance pressed,
+To say farewell, and fussed and fumed
+Around the carriage of the pair--
+Tattiana gently led them there.
+
+XI
+
+And long her eyes as through a haze
+After the wedded couple strain;
+Alas! the friend of childish days
+Away, Tattiana, hath been ta'en.
+Thy dove, thy darling little pet
+On whom a sister's heart was set
+Afar is borne by cruel fate,
+For evermore is separate.
+She wanders aimless as a sprite,
+Into the tangled garden goes
+But nowhere can she find repose,
+Nor even tears afford respite,
+Of consolation all bereft--
+Well nigh her heart in twain was cleft.
+
+XII
+
+In cruel solitude each day
+With flame more ardent passion burns,
+And to Oneguine far away
+Her heart importunately turns.
+She never more his face may view,
+For was it not her duty to
+Detest him for a brother slain?
+The poet fell; already men
+No more remembered him; unto
+Another his betrothed was given;
+The memory of the bard was driven
+Like smoke athwart the heaven blue;
+Two hearts perchance were desolate
+And mourned him still. Why mourn his fate?
+
+XIII
+
+'Twas eve. 'Twas dusk. The river speeds
+In tranquil flow. The beetle hums.
+Already dance to song proceeds;
+The fisher's fire afar illumes
+The river's bank. Tattiana lone
+Beneath the silver of the moon
+Long time in meditation deep
+Her path across the plain doth keep--
+Proceeds, until she from a hill
+Sees where a noble mansion stood,
+A village and beneath, a wood,
+A garden by a shining rill.
+She gazed thereon, and instant beat
+Her heart more loudly and more fleet.
+
+XIV
+
+She hesitates, in doubt is thrown--
+"Shall I proceed, or homeward flee?
+He is not there: I am not known:
+The house and garden I would see."
+Tattiana from the hill descends
+With bated breath, around she bends
+A countenance perplexed and scared.
+She enters a deserted yard--
+Yelping, a pack of dogs rush out,
+But at her shriek ran forth with noise
+The household troop of little boys,
+Who with a scuffle and a shout
+The curs away to kennel chase,
+The damsel under escort place.
+
+XV
+
+"Can I inspect the mansion, please?"
+Tattiana asks, and hurriedly
+Unto Anicia for the keys
+The family of children hie.
+Anicia soon appears, the door
+Opens unto her visitor.
+Into the lonely house she went,
+Wherein a space Oneguine spent.
+She gazed--a cue, forgotten long,
+Doth on the billiard table rest,
+Upon the tumbled sofa placed,
+A riding whip. She strolls along.
+The beldam saith: "The hearth, by it
+The master always used to sit.
+
+XVI
+
+"Departed Lenski here to dine
+In winter time would often come.
+Please follow this way, lady mine,
+This is my master's sitting-room.
+'Tis here he slept, his coffee took,
+Into accounts would sometimes look,
+A book at early morn perused.
+The room my former master used.
+On Sundays by yon window he,
+Spectacles upon nose, all day
+Was wont with me at cards to play.
+God save his soul eternally
+And grant his weary bones their rest
+Deep in our mother Earth's chill breast!"
+
+XVII
+
+Tattiana's eyes with tender gleam
+On everything around her gaze,
+Of priceless value all things seem
+And in her languid bosom raise
+A pleasure though with sorrow knit:
+The table with its lamp unlit,
+The pile of books, with carpet spread
+Beneath the window-sill his bed,
+The landscape which the moonbeams fret,
+The twilight pale which softens all,
+Lord Byron's portrait on the wall
+And the cast-iron statuette
+With folded arms and eyes bent low,
+Cocked hat and melancholy brow.(69)
+
+[Note 69: The Russians not unfrequently adorn their apartments
+with effigies of the great Napoleon.]
+
+XVIII
+
+Long in this fashionable cell
+Tattiana as enchanted stood;
+But it grew late; cold blew the gale;
+Dark was the valley and the wood
+slept o'er the river misty grown.
+Behind the mountain sank the moon.
+Long, long the hour had past when home
+Our youthful wanderer should roam.
+She hid the trouble of her breast,
+Heaved an involuntary sigh
+And turned to leave immediately,
+But first permission did request
+Thither in future to proceed
+That certain volumes she might read.
+
+XIX
+
+Adieu she to the matron said
+At the front gates, but in brief space
+At early morn returns the maid
+To the abandoned dwelling-place.
+When in the study's calm retreat,
+Wrapt in oblivion complete,
+She found herself alone at last,
+Longtime her tears flowed thick and fast;
+But presently she tried to read;
+At first for books was disinclined,
+But soon their choice seemed to her mind
+Remarkable. She then indeed
+Devoured them with an eager zest.
+A new world was made manifest!
+
+XX
+
+Although we know that Eugene had
+Long ceased to be a reading man,
+Still certain authors, I may add,
+He had excepted from the ban:
+The bard of Juan and the Giaour,
+With it may be a couple more;
+Romances three, in which ye scan
+Portrayed contemporary man
+As the reflection of his age,
+His immorality of mind
+To arid selfishness resigned,
+A visionary personage
+With his exasperated sense,
+His energy and impotence.
+
+XXI
+
+And numerous pages had preserved
+The sharp incisions of his nail,
+And these the attentive maid observed
+With eye precise and without fail.
+Tattiana saw with trepidation
+By what idea or observation
+Oneguine was the most impressed,
+In what he merely acquiesced.
+Upon those margins she perceived
+Oneguine's pencillings. His mind
+Made revelations undesigned,
+Of what he thought and what believed,
+A dagger, asterisk, or note
+Interrogation to denote.
+
+XXII
+
+And my Tattiana now began
+To understand by slow degrees
+More clearly, God be praised, the man,
+Whom autocratic fate's decrees
+Had bid her sigh for without hope--
+A dangerous, gloomy misanthrope,
+Being from hell or heaven sent,
+Angel or fiend malevolent.
+Which is he? or an imitation,
+A bogy conjured up in joke,
+A Russian in Childe Harold's cloak,
+Of foreign whims the impersonation--
+Handbook of fashionable phrase
+Or parody of modern ways?
+
+XXIII
+
+Hath she found out the riddle yet?
+Hath she a fitting phrase selected?
+But time flies and she doth forget
+They long at home have her expected--
+Whither two neighbouring dames have walked
+And a long time about her talked.
+"What can be done? She is no child!"
+Cried the old dame with anguish filled:
+"Olinka is her junior, see.
+'Tis time to many her, 'tis true,
+But tell me what am I to do?
+To all she answers cruelly--
+I will not wed, and ever weeps
+And lonely through the forest creeps."
+
+XXIV
+
+"Is she in love?" quoth one. "With whom?
+Bouyanoff courted. She refused.
+Petoushkoff met the selfsame doom.
+The hussar Pikhtin was accused.
+How the young imp on Tania doted!
+To captivate her how devoted!
+I mused: perhaps the matter's squared--
+O yes! my hopes soon disappeared."
+"But, _matushka_, to Moscow you(70)
+Should go, the market for a maid,
+With many a vacancy, 'tis said."--
+"Alas! my friend, no revenue!"
+"Enough to see one winter's end;
+If not, the money I will lend."
+
+[Note 70: "Matushka," or "little mother," a term of endearment
+in constant use amongst Russian females.]
+
+XXV
+
+The venerable dame opined
+The counsel good and full of reason,
+Her money counted, and designed
+To visit Moscow in the season.
+Tattiana learns the intelligence--
+Of her provincial innocence
+The unaffected traits she now
+Unto a carping world must show--
+Her toilette's antiquated style,
+Her antiquated mode of speech,
+For Moscow fops and Circes each
+To mark with a contemptuous smile.
+Horror! had she not better stay
+Deep in the greenwood far away?
+
+XXVI
+
+Arising with the morning's light,
+Unto the fields she makes her way,
+And with emotional delight
+Surveying them, she thus doth say:
+"Ye peaceful valleys all, good-bye!
+Ye well-known mountain summits high,
+Ye groves whose depths I know so well,
+Thou beauteous sky above, farewell!
+Delicious nature, thee I fly,
+The calm existence which I prize
+I yield for splendid vanities,
+Thou too farewell, my liberty!
+Whither and wherefore do I speed
+And what will Destiny concede?"
+
+XXVII
+
+Farther Tattiana's walks extend--
+'Tis now the hillock now the rill
+Their natural attractions lend
+To stay the maid against her will.
+She the acquaintances she loves,
+Her spacious fields and shady groves,
+Another visit hastes to pay.
+But Summer swiftly fades away
+And golden Autumn draweth nigh,
+And pallid nature trembling grieves,
+A victim decked with golden leaves;
+Dark clouds before the north wind fly;
+It blew: it howled: till winter e'en
+Came forth in all her magic sheen.
+
+XXVIII
+
+The snow descends and buries all,
+Hangs heavy on the oaken boughs,
+A white and undulating pall
+O'er hillock and o'er meadow throws.
+The channel of the river stilled
+As if with eider-down is filled.
+The hoar-frost glitters: all rejoice
+In mother Winter's strange caprice.
+But Tania's heart is not at ease,
+Winter's approach she doth not hail
+Nor the frost particles inhale
+Nor the first snow of winter seize
+Her shoulders, breast and face to lave--
+Alarm the winter journey gave.
+
+XXIX
+
+The date was fixed though oft postponed,
+But ultimately doth approach.
+Examined, mended, newly found
+Was the old and forgotten coach;
+Kibitkas three, the accustomed train,(71)
+The household property contain:
+Saucepans and mattresses and chairs,
+Portmanteaus and preserves in jars,
+Feather-beds, also poultry-coops,
+Basins and jugs--well! everything
+To happiness contributing.
+Behold! beside their dwelling groups
+Of serfs the farewell wail have given.
+Nags eighteen to the door are driven.
+
+[Note 71: In former times, and to some extent the practice still
+continues to the present day, Russian families were wont to
+travel with every necessary of life, and, in the case of the
+wealthy, all its luxuries following in their train. As the
+poet complains in a subsequent stanza there were no inns;
+and if the simple Larinas required such ample store of creature
+comforts the impediments accompanying a great noble on his
+journeys may be easily conceived.]
+
+XXX
+
+These to the coach of state are bound,
+Breakfast the busy cooks prepare,
+Baggage is heaped up in a mound,
+Old women at the coachmen swear.
+A bearded postillion astride
+A lean and shaggy nag doth ride,
+Unto the gates the servants fly
+To bid the gentlefolk good-bye.
+These take their seats; the coach of state
+Leisurely through the gateway glides.
+"Adieu! thou home where peace abides,
+Where turmoil cannot penetrate,
+Shall I behold thee once again?"--
+Tattiana tears cannot restrain.
+
+XXXI
+
+The limits of enlightenment
+When to enlarge we shall succeed,
+In course of time (the whole extent
+Will not five centuries exceed
+By computation) it is like
+Our roads transformed the eye will strike;
+Highways all Russia will unite
+And form a network left and right;
+On iron bridges we shall gaze
+Which o'er the waters boldly leap,
+Mountains we'll level and through deep
+Streams excavate subaqueous ways,
+And Christian folk will, I expect,
+An inn at every stage erect.
+
+XXXII
+
+But now, what wretched roads one sees,
+Our bridges long neglected rot,
+And at the stages bugs and fleas
+One moment's slumber suffer not.
+Inns there are none. Pretentious but
+Meagre, within a draughty hut,
+A bill of fare hangs full in sight
+And irritates the appetite.
+Meantime a Cyclops of those parts
+Before a fire which feebly glows
+Mends with the Russian hammer's blows
+The flimsy wares of Western marts,
+With blessings on the ditches and
+The ruts of his own fatherland.
+
+XXXIII
+
+Yet on a frosty winter day
+The journey in a sledge doth please,
+No senseless fashionable lay
+Glides with a more luxurious ease;
+For our Automedons are fire
+And our swift troikas never tire;
+The verst posts catch the vacant eye
+And like a palisade flit by.(72)
+The Larinas unwisely went,
+From apprehension of the cost,
+By their own horses, not the post--
+So Tania to her heart's content
+Could taste the pleasures of the road.
+Seven days and nights the travellers plod.
+
+[Note 72: This somewhat musty joke has appeared in more than one
+national costume. Most Englishmen, if we were to replace
+verst-posts with milestones and substitute a graveyard for
+a palisade, would instantly recognize its Yankee extraction.
+In Russia however its origin is as ancient at least as the
+reign of Catherine the Second. The witticism ran thus: A
+courier sent by Prince Potemkin to the Empress drove so
+fast that his sword, projecting from the vehicle, rattled
+against the verst-posts as if against a palisade!]
+
+XXXIV
+
+But they draw near. Before them, lo!
+White Moscow raises her old spires,
+Whose countless golden crosses glow
+As with innumerable fires.(73)
+Ah! brethren, what was my delight
+When I yon semicircle bright
+Of churches, gardens, belfries high
+Descried before me suddenly!
+Moscow, how oft in evil days,
+Condemned to exile dire by fate,
+On thee I used to meditate!
+Moscow! How much is in the phrase
+For every loyal Russian breast!
+How much is in that word expressed!
+
+[Note 73: The aspect of Moscow, especially as seen from the Sparrow
+Hills, a low range bordering the river Moskva at a short distance
+from the city, is unique and splendid. It possesses several domes
+completely plated with gold and some twelve hundred spires most of
+which are surmounted by a golden cross. At the time of sunset they
+seem literally tipped with flame. It was from this memorable spot
+that Napoleon and the Grand Army first obtained a glimpse at the
+city of the Tsars. There are three hundred and seventy churches in
+Moscow. The Kremlin itself is however by far the most interesting
+object to the stranger.]
+
+XXXV
+
+Lo! compassed by his grove of oaks,
+Petrovski Palace! Gloomily
+His recent glory he invokes.
+Here, drunk with his late victory,
+Napoleon tarried till it please
+Moscow approach on bended knees,
+Time-honoured Kremlin's keys present.
+Not so! My Moscow never went
+To seek him out with bended head.
+No gift she bears, no feast proclaims,
+But lights incendiary flames
+For the impatient chief instead.
+From hence engrossed in thought profound
+He on the conflagration frowned.(74)
+
+[Note 74: Napoleon on his arrival in Moscow on the 14th September
+took up his quarters in the Kremlin, but on the 16th had to
+remove to the Petrovski Palace or Castle on account of the
+conflagration which broke out in all quarters of the city. He
+however returned to the Kremlin on the 19th September. The Palace
+itself is placed in the midst of extensive grounds just outside
+the city, on the road to Tver, i.e. to the northwest. It is
+perhaps worthy of remark, as one amongst numerous circumstances
+proving how extensively the poet interwove his own life-experiences
+with the plot of this poem, that it was by this road that he
+himself must have been in the habit of approaching Moscow from his
+favourite country residence of Mikhailovskoe, in the province of
+Pskoff.]
+
+XXXVI
+
+Adieu, thou witness of our glory,
+Petrovski Palace; come, astir!
+Drive on! the city barriers hoary
+Appear; along the road of Tver
+The coach is borne o'er ruts and holes,
+Past women, sentry-boxes, rolls,
+Past palaces and nunneries,
+Lamp-posts, shops, sledges, families,
+Bokharians, peasants, beds of greens,
+Boulevards, belfries, milliners,
+Huts, chemists, Cossacks, shopkeepers
+And fashionable magazines,
+Balconies, lion's heads on doors,
+Jackdaws on every spire--in scores.(75)
+
+[Note 75: The first line refers to the prevailing shape of the
+cast-iron handles which adorn the _porte cocheres_. The
+Russians are fond of tame birds--jackdaws, pigeons, starlings,
+etc., abound in Moscow and elsewhere.]
+
+XXXVII
+
+The weary way still incomplete,
+An hour passed by--another--till,
+Near Khariton's in a side street
+The coach before a house stood still.
+At an old aunt's they had arrived
+Who had for four long years survived
+An invalid from lung complaint.
+A Kalmuck gray, in caftan rent
+And spectacles, his knitting staid
+And the saloon threw open wide;
+The princess from the sofa cried
+And the newcomers welcome bade.
+The two old ladies then embraced
+And exclamations interlaced.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+"Princesse, mon ange!"--"Pachette!"--
+"Aline!"
+"Who would have thought it? As of yore!
+Is it for long?"--"Ma chere cousine!"
+"Sit down. How funny, to be sure!
+'Tis a scene of romance, I vow!"
+"Tania, my eldest child, you know"--
+"Ah! come, Tattiana, come to me!
+Is it a dream, and can it be?
+Cousin, rememb'rest Grandison?"
+"What! Grandison?"--"Yes, certainly!"
+"Oh! I remember, where is he?"--
+"Here, he resides with Simeon.
+He called upon me Christmas Eve--
+His son is married, just conceive!"
+
+XXXIX
+
+"And he--but of him presently--
+To-morrow Tania we will show,
+What say you? to the family--
+Alas! abroad I cannot go.
+See, I can hardly crawl about--
+But you must both be quite tired out!
+Let us go seek a little rest--
+Ah! I'm so weak--my throbbing breast!
+Oppressive now is happiness,
+Not only sorrow--Ah! my dear,
+Now I am fit for nothing here.
+In old age life is weariness!"
+Then weeping she sank back distressed
+And fits of coughing racked her chest.
+
+XL
+
+By the sick lady's gaiety
+And kindness Tania was impressed,
+But, her own room in memory,
+The strange apartment her oppressed:
+Repose her silken curtains fled,
+She could not sleep in her new bed.
+The early tinkling of the bells
+Which of approaching labour tells
+Aroused Tattiana from her bed.
+The maiden at her casement sits
+As daylight glimmers, darkness flits,
+But ah! discerns nor wood nor mead--
+Beneath her lay a strange courtyard,
+A stable, kitchen, fence appeared.
+
+XLI
+
+To consanguineous dinners they
+Conduct Tattiana constantly,
+That grandmothers and grandsires may
+Contemplate her sad reverie.
+We Russians, friends from distant parts
+Ever receive with kindly hearts
+And exclamations and good cheer.
+"How Tania grows! Doth it appear"
+"Long since I held thee at the font--
+Since in these arms I thee did bear--
+And since I pulled thee by the ear--
+And I to give thee cakes was wont?"--
+Then the old dames in chorus sing,
+"Oh! how our years are vanishing!"
+
+XLII
+
+But nothing changed in them is seen,
+All in the good old style appears,
+Our dear old aunt, Princess Helene,
+Her cap of tulle still ever wears:
+Luceria Lvovna paint applies,
+Amy Petrovna  utters lies,
+Ivan Petrovitch still a gaby,
+Simeon Petrovitch just as shabby;
+Pelagie Nikolavna has
+Her friend Monsieur Finemouche the same,
+Her wolf-dog and her husband tame;
+Still of his club he member was--
+As deaf and silly doth remain,
+Still eats and drinks enough for twain.
+
+XLIII
+
+Their daughters kiss Tattiana fair.
+In the beginning, cold and mute,
+Moscow's young Graces at her stare,
+Examine her from head to foot.
+They deem her somewhat finical,
+Outlandish and provincial,
+A trifle pale, a trifle lean,
+But plainer girls they oft had seen.
+Obedient then to Nature's law,
+With her they did associate,
+Squeeze tiny hands and osculate;
+Her tresses curled in fashion saw,
+And oft in whispers would impart
+A maiden's secrets--of the heart.
+
+XLIV
+
+Triumphs--their own or those of friends--
+Hopes, frolics, dreams and sentiment
+Their harmless conversation blends
+With scandal's trivial ornament.
+Then to reward such confidence
+Her amorous experience
+With mute appeal to ask they seem--
+But Tania just as in a dream
+Without participation hears,
+Their voices nought to her impart
+And the lone secret of her heart,
+Her sacred hoard of joy and tears,
+She buries deep within her breast
+Nor aught confides unto the rest.
+
+XLV
+
+Tattiana would have gladly heard
+The converse of the world polite,
+But in the drawing-room all appeared
+To find in gossip such delight,
+Speech was so tame and colourless
+Their slander e'en was weariness;
+In their sterility of prattle,
+Questions and news and tittle-tattle,
+No sense was ever manifest
+Though by an error and unsought--
+The languid mind could smile at nought,
+Heart would not throb albeit in jest--
+Even amusing fools we miss
+In thee, thou world of empty bliss.
+
+XLVI
+
+In groups, official striplings glance
+Conceitedly on Tania fair,
+And views amongst themselves advance
+Unfavourable unto her.
+But one buffoon unhappy deemed
+Her the ideal which he dreamed,
+And leaning 'gainst the portal closed
+To her an elegy composed.
+Also one Viazemski, remarking
+Tattiana by a poor aunt's side,
+Successfully to please her tried,
+And an old gent the poet marking
+By Tania, smoothing his peruke,
+To ask her name the trouble took.(76)
+
+[Note 76: One of the obscure satirical allusions contained in this
+poem. Doubtless the joke was perfectly intelligible to the
+_habitues_ of contemporary St. Petersburg society. Viazemski of
+course is the poet and prince, Pushkin's friend.]
+
+XLVII
+
+But where Melpomene doth rave
+With lengthened howl and accent loud,
+And her bespangled robe doth wave
+Before a cold indifferent crowd,
+And where Thalia softly dreams
+And heedless of approval seems,
+Terpsichore alone among
+Her sisterhood delights the young
+(So 'twas with us in former years,
+In your young days and also mine),
+Never upon my heroine
+The jealous dame her lorgnette veers,
+The connoisseur his glances throws
+From boxes or from stalls in rows.
+
+XLVIII
+
+To the assembly her they bear.
+There the confusion, pressure, heat,
+The crash of music, candles' glare
+And rapid whirl of many feet,
+The ladies' dresses airy, light,
+The motley moving mass and bright,
+Young ladies in a vasty curve,
+To strike imagination serve.
+'Tis there that arrant fops display
+Their insolence and waistcoats white
+And glasses unemployed all night;
+Thither hussars on leave will stray
+To clank the spur, delight the fair--
+And vanish like a bird in air.
+
+XLIX
+
+Full many a lovely star hath night
+And Moscow many a beauty fair:
+Yet clearer shines than every light
+The moon in the blue atmosphere.
+And she to whom my lyre would fain,
+Yet dares not, dedicate its strain,
+Shines in the female firmament
+Like a full moon magnificent.
+Lo! with what pride celestial
+Her feet the earth beneath her press!
+Her heart how full of gentleness,
+Her glance how wild yet genial!
+Enough, enough, conclude thy lay--
+For folly's dues thou hadst to pay.
+
+L
+
+Noise, laughter, bowing, hurrying mixt,
+Gallop, mazurka, waltzing--see!
+A pillar by, two aunts betwixt,
+Tania, observed by nobody,
+Looks upon all with absent gaze
+And hates the world's discordant ways.
+'Tis noisome to her there: in thought
+Again her rural life she sought,
+The hamlet, the poor villagers,
+The little solitary nook
+Where shining runs the tiny brook,
+Her garden, and those books of hers,
+And the lime alley's twilight dim
+Where the first time she met with _him_.
+
+LI
+
+Thus widely meditation erred,
+Forgot the world, the noisy ball,
+Whilst from her countenance ne'er stirred
+The eyes of a grave general.
+Both aunts looked knowing as a judge,
+Each gave Tattiana's arm a nudge
+And in a whisper did repeat:
+"Look quickly to your left, my sweet!"
+"The left? Why, what on earth is there?"--
+"No matter, look immediately.
+There, in that knot of company,
+Two dressed in uniform appear--
+Ah! he has gone the other way"--
+"Who? Is it that stout general, pray?"--
+
+LII
+
+Let us congratulations pay
+To our Tattiana conquering,
+And for a time our course delay,
+That I forget not whom I sing.
+Let me explain that in my song
+"I celebrate a comrade young
+And the extent of his caprice;
+O epic Muse, my powers increase
+And grant success to labour long;
+Having a trusty staff bestowed,
+Grant that I err not on the road."
+Enough! my pack is now unslung--
+To classicism I've homage paid,
+Though late, have a beginning made.(77)
+
+[Note 77: Many will consider this mode of bringing the canto
+to a conclusion of more than doubtful taste. The poet evidently
+aims a stroke at the pedantic and narrow-minded criticism to
+which original genius, emancipated from the strait-waistcoat of
+conventionality, is not unfrequently subjected.]
+
+
+End of Canto The Seventh
+
+
+
+CANTO THE EIGHTH
+
+The Great World
+
+'Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+Still for ever fare thee well.'--Byron
+
+
+Canto the Eighth
+
+[St. Petersburg, Boldino, Tsarskoe Selo, 1880-1881]
+
+
+I
+
+In the Lyceum's noiseless shade
+As in a garden when I grew,
+I Apuleius gladly read
+But would not look at Cicero.
+'Twas then in valleys lone, remote,
+In spring-time, heard the cygnet's note
+By waters shining tranquilly,
+That first the Muse appeared to me.
+Into the study of the boy
+There came a sudden flash of light,
+The Muse revealed her first delight,
+Sang childhood's pastimes and its joy,
+Glory with which our history teems
+And the heart's agitated dreams.
+
+II
+
+And the world met her smilingly,
+A first success light pinions gave,
+The old Derjavine noticed me,
+And blest me, sinking to the grave.(78)
+Then my companions young with pleasure
+In the unfettered hours of leisure
+Her utterances ever heard,
+And by a partial temper stirred
+And boiling o'er with friendly heat,
+They first of all my brow did wreathe
+And an encouragement did breathe
+That my coy Muse might sing more sweet.
+O triumphs of my guileless days,
+How sweet a dream your memories raise!
+
+[Note 78: This touching scene produced a lasting impression on
+Pushkin's mind. It took place at a public examination at
+the Lyceum, on which occasion the boy poet produced a poem. The
+incident recalls the "Mon cher Tibulle" of Voltaire and the
+youthful Parny (see Note 42). Derjavine flourished during the
+reigns of Catherine the Second and Alexander the First. His
+poems are stiff and formal in style and are not much thought of
+by contemporary Russians. But a century back a very infinitesimal
+endowment of literary ability was sufficient to secure imperial
+reward and protection, owing to the backward state of the empire.
+Stanza II properly concludes with this line, the remainder having
+been expunged either by the author himself or the censors. I have
+filled up the void with lines from a fragment left by the author
+having reference to this canto.]
+
+III
+
+Passion's wild sway I then allowed,
+Her promptings unto law did make,
+Pursuits I followed of the crowd,
+My sportive Muse I used to take
+To many a noisy feast and fight,
+Terror of guardians of the night;
+And wild festivities among
+She brought with her the gift of song.
+Like a Bacchante in her sport
+Beside the cup she sang her rhymes
+And the young revellers of past times
+Vociferously paid her court,
+And I, amid the friendly crowd,
+Of my light paramour was proud.
+
+IV
+
+But I abandoned their array,
+And fled afar--she followed me.
+How oft the kindly Muse away
+Hath whiled the road's monotony,
+Entranced me by some mystic tale.
+How oft beneath the moonbeams pale
+Like Leonora did she ride(79)
+With me Caucasian rocks beside!
+How oft to the Crimean shore
+She led me through nocturnal mist
+Unto the sounding sea to list,
+Where Nereids murmur evermore,
+And where the billows hoarsely raise
+To God eternal hymns of praise.
+
+[Note 79: See Note 30, "Leonora," a poem by Gottfried Augustus
+Burger, b. 1748, d. 1794.]
+
+V
+
+Then, the far capital forgot,
+Its splendour and its blandishments,
+In poor Moldavia cast her lot,
+She visited the humble tents
+Of migratory gipsy hordes--
+And wild among them grew her words--
+Our godlike tongue she could exchange
+For savage speech, uncouth and strange,
+And ditties of the steppe she loved.
+But suddenly all changed around!
+Lo! in my garden was she found
+And as a country damsel roved,
+A pensive sorrow in her glance
+And in her hand a French romance.
+
+VI
+
+Now for the first time I my Muse
+Lead into good society,
+Her steppe-like beauties I peruse
+With jealous fear, anxiety.
+Through dense aristocratic rows
+Of diplomats and warlike beaux
+And supercilious dames she glides,
+Sits down and gazes on all sides--
+Amazed at the confusing crowd,
+Variety of speech and vests,
+Deliberate approach of guests
+Who to the youthful hostess bowed,
+And the dark fringe of men, like frames
+Enclosing pictures of fair dames.
+
+VII
+
+Assemblies oligarchical
+Please her by their decorum fixed,
+The rigour of cold pride and all
+Titles and ages intermixed.
+But who in that choice company
+With clouded brow stands silently?
+Unknown to all he doth appear,
+A vision desolate and drear
+Doth seem to him the festal scene.
+Doth his brow wretchedness declare
+Or suffering pride? Why is he there?
+Who may he be? Is it Eugene?
+Pray is it he? It is the same.
+"And is it long since back he came?
+
+VIII
+
+"Is he the same or grown more wise?
+Still doth the misanthrope appear?
+He has returned, say in what guise?
+What is his latest character?
+What doth he act? Is it Melmoth,(80)
+Philanthropist or patriot,
+Childe Harold, quaker, devotee,
+Or other mask donned playfully?
+Or a good fellow for the nonce,
+Like you and me and all the rest?--
+But this is my advice, 'twere best
+Not to behave as he did once--
+Society he duped enow."
+"Is he known to you?"--"Yes and No."
+
+[Note 80: A romance by Maturin.]
+
+IX
+
+Wherefore regarding him express
+Perverse, unfavourable views?
+Is it that human restlessness
+For ever carps, condemns, pursues?
+Is it that ardent souls of flame
+By recklessness amuse or shame
+Selfish nonentities around?
+That mind which yearns for space is bound?
+And that too often we receive
+Professions eagerly for deeds,
+That crass stupidity misleads,
+That we by cant ourselves deceive,
+That mediocrity alone
+Without disgust we look upon?
+
+X
+
+Happy he who in youth was young,
+Happy who timely grew mature,
+He who life's frosts which early wrung
+Hath gradually learnt to endure;
+By visions who was ne'er deranged
+Nor from the mob polite estranged,
+At twenty who was prig or swell,
+At thirty who was married well,
+At fifty who relief obtained
+From public and from private ties,
+Who glory, wealth and dignities
+Hath tranquilly in turn attained,
+And unto whom we all allude
+As to a worthy man and good!
+
+XI
+
+But sad is the reflection made,
+In vain was youth by us received,
+That we her constantly betrayed
+And she at last hath us deceived;
+That our desires which noblest seemed,
+The purest of the dreams we dreamed,
+Have one by one all withered grown
+Like rotten leaves by Autumn strown--
+'Tis fearful to anticipate
+Nought but of dinners a long row,
+To look on life as on a show,
+Eternally to imitate
+The seemly crowd, partaking nought
+Its passions and its modes of thought.
+
+XII
+
+The butt of scandal having been,
+'Tis dreadful--ye agree, I hope--
+To pass with reasonable men
+For a fictitious misanthrope,
+A visionary mortified,
+Or monster of Satanic pride,
+Or e'en the "Demon" of my strain.(81)
+Oneguine--take him up again--
+In duel having killed his friend
+And reached, with nought his mind to engage,
+The twenty-sixth year of his age,
+Wearied of leisure in the end,
+Without profession, business, wife,
+He knew not how to spend his life.
+
+[Note 81: The "Demon," a short poem by Pushkin which at its first
+appearance created some excitement in Russian society. A more
+appropriate, or at any rate explanatory title, would have been
+the _Tempter_. It is descriptive of the first manifestation of
+doubt and cynicism in his youthful mind, allegorically as the
+visits of a "demon." Russian society was moved to embody this
+imaginary demon in the person of a certain friend of Pushkin's.
+This must not be confounded with Lermontoff's poem bearing the
+same title upon which Rubinstein's new opera, "Il Demonio," is
+founded.]
+
+XIII
+
+Him a disquietude did seize,
+A wish from place to place to roam,
+A very troublesome disease,
+In some a willing martyrdom.
+Abandoned he his country seat,
+Of woods and fields the calm retreat,
+Where every day before his eyes
+A blood-bespattered shade would rise,
+And aimless journeys did commence--
+But still remembrance to him clings,
+His travels like all other things
+Inspired but weariness intense;
+Returning, from his ship amid
+A ball he fell as Tchatzki did.(82)
+
+[Note 82: Tchatzki, one of the principal characters in Griboyedoff's
+celebrated comedy "Woe from Wit" (_Gore ot Ouma_).]
+
+XIV
+
+Behold, the crowd begins to stir,
+A whisper runs along the hall,
+A lady draws the hostess near,
+Behind her a grave general.
+Her manners were deliberate,
+Reserved, but not inanimate,
+Her eyes no saucy glance address,
+There was no angling for success.
+Her features no grimaces bleared;
+Of affectation innocent,
+Calm and without embarrassment,
+A faithful model she appeared
+Of "comme il faut." Shishkoff, forgive!
+I can't translate the adjective.(83)
+
+[Note 83: Shishkoff was a member of the literary school which
+cultivated the vernacular as opposed to the _Arzamass_ or
+Gallic school, to which the poet himself and his uncle Vassili
+Pushkin belonged. He was admiral, author, and minister of
+education.]
+
+XV
+
+Ladies in crowds around her close,
+Her with a smile old women greet,
+The men salute with lower bows
+And watch her eye's full glance to meet.
+Maidens before her meekly move
+Along the hall, and high above
+The crowd doth head and shoulders rise
+The general who accompanies.
+None could her beautiful declare,
+Yet viewing her from head to foot,
+None could a trace of that impute,
+Which in the elevated sphere
+Of London life is "vulgar" called
+And ruthless fashion hath blackballed.
+
+XVI
+
+I like this word exceedingly
+Although it will not bear translation,
+With us 'tis quite a novelty
+Not high in general estimation;
+'Twould serve ye in an epigram--
+But turn we once more to our dame.
+Enchanting, but unwittingly,
+At table she was sitting by
+The brilliant Nina Voronskoi,
+The Neva's Cleopatra, and
+None the conviction could withstand
+That Nina's marble symmetry,
+Though dazzling its effulgence white,
+Could not eclipse her neighbour's light.
+
+XVII
+
+"And is it," meditates Eugene.
+"And is it she? It must be--no--
+How! from the waste of steppes unseen,"--
+And the eternal lorgnette through
+Frequent and rapid doth his glance
+Seek the forgotten countenance
+Familiar to him long ago.
+"Inform me, prince, pray dost thou know
+The lady in the crimson cap
+Who with the Spanish envoy speaks?"--
+The prince's eye Oneguine seeks:
+"Ah! long the world hath missed thy shape!
+But stop! I will present thee, if
+You choose."--"But who is she?"--"My wife."
+
+XVIII
+
+"So thou art wed! I did not know.
+Long ago?"--"'Tis the second year."
+"To--?"--"Larina."--"Tattiana?"--"So.
+And dost thou know her?"--"We live near."
+"Then come with me." The prince proceeds,
+His wife approaches, with him leads
+His relative and friend as well.
+The lady's glance upon him fell--
+And though her soul might be confused,
+And vehemently though amazed
+She on the apparition gazed,
+No signs of trouble her accused,
+A mien unaltered she preserved,
+Her bow was easy, unreserved.
+
+XIX
+
+Ah no! no faintness her attacked
+Nor sudden turned she red or white,
+Her brow she did not e'en contract
+Nor yet her lip compressed did bite.
+Though he surveyed her at his ease,
+Not the least trace Oneguine sees
+Of the Tattiana of times fled.
+He conversation would have led--
+But could not. Then she questioned him:--
+"Had he been long here, and where from?
+Straight from their province had he come?"--
+Cast upwards then her eyeballs dim
+Unto her husband, went away--
+Transfixed Oneguine mine doth stay.
+
+XX
+
+Is this the same Tattiana, say,
+Before whom once in solitude,
+In the beginning of this lay,
+Deep in the distant province rude,
+Impelled by zeal for moral worth,
+He salutary rules poured forth?
+The maid whose note he still possessed
+Wherein the heart its vows expressed,
+Where all upon the surface lies,--
+That girl--but he must dreaming be--
+That girl whom once on a time he
+Could in a humble sphere despise,
+Can she have been a moment gone
+Thus haughty, careless in her tone?
+
+XXI
+
+He quits the fashionable throng
+And meditative homeward goes,
+Visions, now sad, now grateful, long
+Do agitate his late repose.
+He wakes--they with a letter come--
+The Princess N. will be at home
+On such a day. O Heavens, 'tis she!
+Oh! I accept. And instantly
+He a polite reply doth scrawl.
+What hath he dreamed? What hath occurred?
+In the recesses what hath stirred
+Of a heart cold and cynical?
+Vexation? Vanity? or strove
+Again the plague of boyhood--love?
+
+XXII
+
+The hours once more Oneguine counts,
+Impatient waits the close of day,
+But ten strikes and his sledge he mounts
+And gallops to her house away.
+Trembling he seeks the young princess--
+Tattiana finds in loneliness.
+Together moments one or two
+They sat, but conversation's flow
+Deserted Eugene. He, distraught,
+Sits by her gloomily, desponds,
+Scarce to her questions he responds,
+Full of exasperating thought.
+He fixedly upon her stares--
+She calm and unconcerned appears.
+
+XXIII
+
+The husband comes and interferes
+With this unpleasant _tete-a-tete_,
+With Eugene pranks of former years
+And jests doth recapitulate.
+They talked and laughed. The guests arrived.
+The conversation was revived
+By the coarse wit of worldly hate;
+But round the hostess scintillate
+Light sallies without coxcombry,
+Awhile sound conversation seems
+To banish far unworthy themes
+And platitudes and pedantry,
+And never was the ear affright
+By liberties or loose or light.
+
+XXIV
+
+And yet the city's flower was there,
+Noblesse and models of the mode,
+Faces which we meet everywhere
+And necessary fools allowed.
+Behold the dames who once were fine
+With roses, caps and looks malign;
+Some marriageable maids behold,
+Blank, unapproachable and cold.
+Lo, the ambassador who speaks
+Economy political,
+And with gray hair ambrosial
+The old man who has had his freaks,
+Renowned for his acumen, wit,
+But now ridiculous a bit.
+
+XXV
+
+Behold Sabouroff, whom the age
+For baseness of the spirit scorns,
+Saint Priest, who every album's page
+With blunted pencil-point adorns.
+Another tribune of the ball
+Hung like a print against the wall,
+Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84)
+Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim.
+The traveller, bird of passage he,
+Stiff, overstarched and insolent,
+Awakens secret merriment
+By his embarrassed dignity--
+Mute glances interchanged aside
+Meet punishment for him provide.
+
+[Note 84: On Palm Sunday the Russians carry branches, or used to
+do so. These branches were adorned with little painted pictures
+of cherubs with the ruddy complexions of tradition. Hence the
+comparison.]
+
+XXVI
+
+But my Oneguine the whole eve
+Within his mind Tattiana bore,
+Not the young timid maid, believe,
+Enamoured, simple-minded, poor,
+But the indifferent princess,
+Divinity without access
+Of the imperial Neva's shore.
+O Men, how very like ye are
+To Eve the universal mother,
+Possession hath no power to please,
+The serpent to unlawful trees
+Aye bids ye in some way or other--
+Unless forbidden fruit we eat,
+Our paradise is no more sweet.
+
+XXVII
+
+Ah! how Tattiana was transformed,
+How thoroughly her part she took!
+How soon to habits she conformed
+Which crushing dignity must brook!
+Who would the maiden innocent
+In the unmoved, magnificent
+Autocrat of the drawing-room seek?
+And he had made her heart beat quick!
+'Twas he whom, amid nightly shades,
+Whilst Morpheus his approach delays,
+She mourned and to the moon would raise
+The languid eye of love-sick maids,
+Dreaming perchance in weal or woe
+To end with him her path below.
+
+XXVIII
+
+To Love all ages lowly bend,
+But the young unpolluted heart
+His gusts should fertilize, amend,
+As vernal storms the fields athwart.
+Youth freshens beneath Passion's showers,
+Develops and matures its powers,
+And thus in season the rich field
+Gay flowers and luscious fruit doth yield.
+But at a later, sterile age,
+The solstice of our earthly years,
+Mournful Love's deadly trace appears
+As storms which in chill autumn rage
+And leave a marsh the fertile ground
+And devastate the woods around.
+
+XXIX
+
+There was no doubt! Eugene, alas!
+Tattiana loved as when a lad,
+Both day and night he now must pass
+In love-lorn meditation sad.
+Careless of every social rule,
+The crystals of her vestibule
+He daily in his drives drew near
+And like a shadow haunted her.
+Enraptured was he if allowed
+To swathe her shoulders in the furs,
+If his hot hand encountered hers,
+Or he dispersed the motley crowd
+Of lackeys in her pathway grouped,
+Or to pick up her kerchief stooped.
+
+XXX
+
+She seemed of him oblivious,
+Despite the anguish of his breast,
+Received him freely at her house,
+At times three words to him addressed
+In company, or simply bowed,
+Or recognized not in the crowd.
+No coquetry was there, I vouch--
+Society endures not such!
+Oneguine's cheek grew ashy pale,
+Either she saw not or ignored;
+Oneguine wasted; on my word,
+Already he grew phthisical.
+All to the doctors Eugene send,
+And they the waters recommend.
+
+XXXI
+
+He went not--sooner was prepared
+To write his forefathers to warn
+Of his approach; but nothing cared
+Tattiana--thus the sex is born.--
+He obstinately will remain,
+Still hopes, endeavours, though in vain.
+Sickness more courage doth command
+Than health, so with a trembling hand
+A love epistle he doth scrawl.
+Though correspondence as a rule
+He used to hate--and was no fool--
+Yet suffering emotional
+Had rendered him an invalid;
+But word for word his letter read.
+
+Oneguine's Letter to Tattiana
+
+All is foreseen. My secret drear
+Will sound an insult in your ear.
+What acrimonious scorn I trace
+Depicted on your haughty face!
+What do I ask? What cause assigned
+That I to you reveal my mind?
+To what malicious merriment,
+It may be, I yield nutriment!
+
+Meeting you in times past by chance,
+Warmth I imagined in your glance,
+But, knowing not the actual truth,
+Restrained the impulses of youth;
+Also my wretched liberty
+I would not part with finally;
+This separated us as well--
+Lenski, unhappy victim, fell,
+From everything the heart held dear
+I then resolved my heart to tear;
+Unknown to all, without a tie,
+I thought--retirement, liberty,
+Will happiness replace. My God!
+How I have erred and felt the rod!
+
+No, ever to behold your face,
+To follow you in every place,
+Your smiling lips, your beaming eyes,
+To watch with lovers' ecstasies,
+Long listen, comprehend the whole
+Of your perfections in my soul,
+Before you agonized to die--
+This, this were true felicity!
+
+But such is not for me. I brood
+Daily of love in solitude.
+My days of life approach their end,
+Yet I in idleness expend
+The remnant destiny concedes,
+And thus each stubbornly proceeds.
+I feel, allotted is my span;
+But, that life longer may remain,
+At morn I must assuredly
+Know that thy face that day I see.
+
+I tremble lest my humble prayer
+You with stern countenance declare
+The artifice of villany--
+I hear your harsh, reproachful cry.
+If ye but knew how dreadful 'tis
+To bear love's parching agonies--
+To burn, yet reason keep awake
+The fever of the blood to slake--
+A passionate desire to bend
+And, sobbing at your feet, to blend
+Entreaties, woes and prayers, confess
+All that the heart would fain express--
+Yet with a feigned frigidity
+To arm the tongue and e'en the eye,
+To be in conversation clear
+And happy unto you appear.
+
+So be it! But internal strife
+I cannot longer wage concealed.
+The die is cast! Thine is my life!
+Into thy hands my fate I yield!
+
+XXXII
+
+No answer! He another sent.
+Epistle second, note the third,
+Remained unnoticed. Once he went
+To an assembly--she appeared
+Just as he entered. How severe!
+She will not see, she will not hear.
+Alas! she is as hard, behold,
+And frosty as a Twelfth Night cold.
+Oh, how her lips compressed restrain
+The indignation of her heart!
+A sidelong look doth Eugene dart:
+Where, where, remorse, compassion, pain?
+Where, where, the trace of tears? None, none!
+Upon her brow sits wrath alone--
+
+XXXIII
+
+And it may be a secret dread
+Lest the world or her lord divine
+A certain little escapade
+Well known unto Oneguine mine.
+'Tis hopeless! Homeward doth he flee
+Cursing his own stupidity,
+And brooding o'er the ills he bore,
+Society renounced once more.
+Then in the silent cabinet
+He in imagination saw
+The time when Melancholy's claw
+'Mid worldly pleasures chased him yet,
+Caught him and by the collar took
+And shut him in a lonely nook.
+
+XXXIV
+
+He read as vainly as before,
+perusing Gibbon and Rousseau,
+Manzoni, Herder and Chamfort,(85)
+Madame de Stael, Bichat, Tissot:
+He read the unbelieving Bayle,
+Also the works of Fontenelle,
+Some Russian authors he perused--
+Nought in the universe refused:
+Nor almanacs nor newspapers,
+Which lessons unto us repeat,
+Wherein I castigation get;
+And where a madrigal occurs
+Writ in my honour now and then--
+_E sempre bene_, gentlemen!
+
+[Note 85: Owing to the unstable nature of fame the names of some
+of the above literary worthies necessitate reference at this
+period in the nineteenth century.
+
+Johann Gottfried von Herder, b. 1744, d. 1803, a German
+philosopher, philanthropist and author, was the personal friend
+of Goethe and held the poet of court chaplain at Weimar. His chief
+work is entitled, "Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of
+Mankind," in 4 vols.
+
+Sebastien Roch Nicholas Chamfort, b. 1741, d. 1794, was a French
+novelist and dramatist of the Revolution, who contrary to his
+real wishes became entangled in its meshes. He exercised a
+considerable influence over certain of its leaders, notably
+Mirabeau and Sieyes. He is said to have originated the title of
+the celebrated tract from the pen of the latter. "What is the
+Tiers Etat? Nothing. What ought it to be? Everything." He
+ultimately experienced the common destiny in those days, was thrown
+into prison and though shortly afterwards released, his
+incarceration had such an effect upon his mind that he committed
+suicide.
+
+Marie Francois Xavier Bichat, b. 1771, d. 1802, a French anatomist
+and physiologist of eminence. His principal works are a "Traite
+des Membranes," "Anatomie generale appliquee a la Physiologie et a
+la Medecine," and "Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la
+Mort." He died at an early age from constant exposure to noxious
+exhalations during his researches.
+
+Pierre Francois Tissot, b. 1768, d. 1864, a French writer of the
+Revolution and Empire. In 1812 he was appointed by Napoleon editor
+of the _Gazette de France_. He wrote histories of the Revolution,
+of Napoleon and of France. He was likewise a poet and author of a
+work entitled "Les trois Irlandais Conjures, ou l'ombre d'Emmet,"
+and is believed to have edited Foy's "History of the Peninsular
+War."
+
+The above catalogue by its heterogeneous composition gives a fair
+idea of the intellectual movement in Russia from the Empress
+Catherine the Second downwards. It is characterized by a feverish
+thirst for encyclopaedic knowledge without a corresponding power
+of assimilation.]
+
+XXXV
+
+But what results? His eyes peruse
+But thoughts meander far away--
+Ideas, desires and woes confuse
+His intellect in close array.
+His eyes, the printed lines betwixt,
+On lines invisible are fixt;
+'Twas these he read and these alone
+His spirit was intent upon.
+They were the wonderful traditions
+Of kindly, dim antiquity,
+Dreams with no continuity,
+Prophecies, threats and apparitions,
+The lively trash of stories long
+Or letters of a maiden young.
+
+XXXVI
+
+And by degrees upon him grew
+A lethargy of sense, a trance,
+And soon imagination threw
+Before him her wild game of chance.
+And now upon the snow in thaw
+A young man motionless he saw,
+As one who bivouacs afield,
+And heard a voice cry--_Why! He's killed_!--
+And now he views forgotten foes,
+Poltroons and men of slanderous tongue,
+Bevies of treacherous maidens young;
+Of thankless friends the circle rose,
+A mansion--by the window, see!
+She sits alone--'tis ever _she_!
+
+XXXVII
+
+So frequently his mind would stray
+He well-nigh lost the use of sense,
+Almost became a poet say--
+Oh! what had been his eminence!
+Indeed, by force of magnetism
+A Russian poem's mechanism
+My scholar without aptitude
+At this time almost understood.
+How like a poet was my chum
+When, sitting by his fire alone
+Whilst cheerily the embers shone,
+He "Benedetta" used to hum,
+Or "Idol mio," and in the grate
+Would lose his slippers or gazette.
+
+XXXVIII
+
+Time flies! a genial air abroad,
+Winter resigned her empire white,
+Oneguine ne'er as poet showed
+Nor died nor lost his senses quite.
+Spring cheered him up, and he resigned
+His chambers close wherein confined
+He marmot-like did hibernate,
+His double sashes and his grate,
+And sallied forth one brilliant morn--
+Along the Neva's bank he sleighs,
+On the blue blocks of ice the rays
+Of the sun glisten; muddy, worn,
+The snow upon the streets doth melt--
+Whither along them doth he pelt?
+
+XXXIX
+
+Oneguine whither gallops? Ye
+Have guessed already. Yes, quite so!
+Unto his own Tattiana he,
+Incorrigible rogue, doth go.
+Her house he enters, ghastly white,
+The vestibule finds empty quite--
+He enters the saloon. 'Tis blank!
+A door he opens. But why shrank
+He back as from a sudden blow?--
+Alone the princess sitteth there,
+Pallid and with dishevelled hair,
+Gazing upon a note below.
+Her tears flow plentifully and
+Her cheek reclines upon her hand.
+
+XL
+
+Oh! who her speechless agonies
+Could not in that brief moment guess!
+Who now could fail to recognize
+Tattiana in the young princess!
+Tortured by pangs of wild regret,
+Eugene fell prostrate at her feet--
+She starts, nor doth a word express,
+But gazes on Oneguine's face
+Without amaze or wrath displayed:
+His sunken eye and aspect faint,
+Imploring looks and mute complaint
+She comprehends. The simple maid
+By fond illusions once possest
+Is once again made manifest.
+
+XLI
+
+His kneeling posture he retains--
+Calmly her eyes encounter his--
+Insensible her hand remains
+Beneath his lips' devouring kiss.
+What visions then her fancy thronged--
+A breathless silence then, prolonged--
+But finally she softly said:
+"Enough, arise! for much we need
+Without disguise ourselves explain.
+Oneguine, hast forgotten yet
+The hour when--Fate so willed--we met
+In the lone garden and the lane?
+How meekly then I heard you preach--
+To-day it is my turn to teach.
+
+XLII
+
+"Oneguine, I was younger then,
+And better, if I judge aright;
+I loved you--what did I obtain?
+Affection how did you requite?
+But with austerity!--for you
+No novelty--is it not true?--
+Was the meek love a maiden feels.
+But now--my very blood congeals,
+Calling to mind your icy look
+And sermon--but in that dread hour
+I blame not your behaviour--
+An honourable course ye took,
+Displayed a noble rectitude--
+My soul is filled with gratitude!
+
+XLIII
+
+"Then, in the country, is't not true?
+And far removed from rumour vain;
+I did not please you. Why pursue
+Me now, inflict upon me pain?--
+Wherefore am I your quarry held?--
+Is it that I am now compelled
+To move in fashionable life,
+That I am rich, a prince's wife?--
+Because my lord, in battles maimed,
+Is petted by the Emperor?--
+That my dishonour would ensure
+A notoriety proclaimed,
+And in society might shed
+A bastard fame prohibited?
+
+XLIV
+
+"I weep. And if within your breast
+My image hath not disappeared,
+Know that your sarcasm ill-suppressed,
+Your conversation cold and hard,
+If the choice in my power were,
+To lawless love I should prefer--
+And to these letters and these tears.
+For visions of my childish years
+Then ye were barely generous,
+Age immature averse to cheat--
+But now--what brings you to my feet?--
+How mean, how pusillanimous!
+A prudent man like you and brave
+To shallow sentiment a slave!
+
+XLV
+
+"Oneguine, all this sumptuousness,
+The gilding of life's vanities,
+In the world's vortex my success,
+My splendid house and gaieties--
+What are they? Gladly would I yield
+This life in masquerade concealed,
+This glitter, riot, emptiness,
+For my wild garden and bookcase,--
+Yes! for our unpretending home,
+Oneguine--the beloved place
+Where the first time I saw your face,--
+Or for the solitary tomb
+Wherein my poor old nurse doth lie
+Beneath a cross and shrubbery.
+
+XLVI
+
+"'Twas possible then, happiness--
+Nay, near--but destiny decreed--
+My lot is fixed--with thoughtlessness
+It may be that I did proceed--
+With bitter tears my mother prayed,
+And for Tattiana, mournful maid,
+Indifferent was her future fate.
+I married--now, I supplicate--
+For ever your Tattiana leave.
+Your heart possesses, I know well,
+Honour and pride inflexible.
+I love you--to what end deceive?--
+But I am now another's bride--
+For ever faithful will abide."
+
+XLVII
+
+She rose--departed. But Eugene
+Stood as if struck by lightning fire.
+What a storm of emotions keen
+Raged round him and of balked desire!
+And hark! the clank of spurs is heard
+And Tania's husband soon appeared.--
+But now our hero we must leave
+Just at a moment which I grieve
+Must be pronounced unfortunate--
+For long--for ever. To be sure
+Together we have wandered o'er
+The world enough. Congratulate
+Each other as the shore we climb!
+Hurrah! it long ago was time!
+
+XLVIII
+
+Reader, whoever thou mayst be,
+Foeman or friend, I do aspire
+To part in amity with thee!
+Adieu! whate'er thou didst desire
+From careless stanzas such as these,
+Of passion reminiscences,
+Pictures of the amusing scene,
+Repose from labour, satire keen,
+Or faults of grammar on its page--
+God grant that all who herein glance,
+In serious mood or dalliance
+Or in a squabble to engage,
+May find a crumb to satisfy.
+Now we must separate. Good-bye!
+
+XLIX
+
+And farewell thou, my gloomy friend,
+Thou also, my ideal true,
+And thou, persistent to the end,
+My little book. With thee I knew
+All that a poet could desire,
+Oblivion of life's tempest dire,
+Of friends the grateful intercourse--
+Oh, many a year hath run its course
+Since I beheld Eugene and young
+Tattiana in a misty dream,
+And my romance's open theme
+Glittered in a perspective long,
+And I discerned through Fancy's prism
+Distinctly not its mechanism.
+
+L
+
+But ye to whom, when friendship heard,
+The first-fruits of my tale I read,
+As Saadi anciently averred--(86)
+Some are afar and some are dead.
+Without them Eugene is complete;
+And thou, from whom Tattiana sweet;
+Was drawn, ideal of my lay--
+Ah! what hath fate not torn away!
+Happy who quit life's banquet seat
+Before the dregs they shall divine
+Of the cup brimming o'er with wine--
+Who the romance do not complete,
+But who abandon it--as I
+Have my Oneguine--suddenly.
+
+[Note 86: The celebrated Persian poet. Pushkin uses the passage
+referred to as an epigraph to the "Fountain of Baktchiserai." It
+runs thus: "Many, even as I, visited that fountain, but some of
+these are dead and some have journeyed afar." Saadi was born in
+1189 at Shiraz and was a reputed descendant from Ali, Mahomet's
+son-in-law. In his youth he was a soldier, was taken prisoner by
+the Crusaders and forced to work in the ditches of Tripoli,
+whence he was ransomed by a merchant whose daughter he subsequently
+married. He did not commence writing till an advanced age. His
+principal work is the "Gulistan," or "Rose Garden," a work which
+has been translated into almost every European tongue.]
+
+
+End of Canto The Eighth
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE ONEGUINE [ONEGIN]***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 23997.txt or 23997.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/9/9/23997
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+