of that sort; but secretly

she with ineffable elation

4 could not help thinking of it;

and the thought sank into her heart;

the time had come — she fell in love.

Thus, dropped into the earth, a seed

8 is quickened by the fire of spring.

For long had her imagination,

consumed with mollitude and anguish,

craved for the fatal food;

12 for long had the heart’s languishment

constrained her youthful bosom;

her soul waited — for somebody.

VIII

And not in vain it waited. Her eyes opened;

she said: “’Tis he!”

Alas! now both the days and nights,

4 and hot, lone sleep,

all’s full of him; to the dear girl

unceasingly with magic force

all speaks of him. To her are tedious

8 alike the sounds of friendly speeches

and the gaze of assiduous servants.

Immersed in gloom,

to visitors she does not listen,

12 and imprecates their leisures,

their unexpected

arrival and protracted sitting down.

IX

With what attention does she now

read some delicious novel,

with what vivid enchantment

4 imbibe the ravishing illusion!

Creations by the happy power

of dreaming animated,

the lover of Julie Wolmar,

8 Malek-Adhel, and de Linar,

and Werther, restless martyr,

and the inimitable Grandison,18

who brings upon us somnolence —

12 all for the tender, dreamy girl

have been invested with a single image,

have in Onegin merged alone.

X

Imagining herself the heroine

of her beloved authors —

Clarissa, Julia, Delphine —

4 Tatiana in the stillness of the woods

alone roams with a dangerous book;

in it she seeks and finds

her secret ardency, her dreams,

8 the fruits of the heart’s fullness;

she sighs, and having made her own

another’s ecstasy, another’s woe,

she whispers in a trance, by heart,

12 a letter to the amiable hero.

But our hero, whoever he might be,

was certainly no Grandison.

XI

His style to a grave strain having attuned,

time was, a fervid author

used to present to us

4 his hero as a model of perfection.

He’d furnish the loved object —

always iniquitously persecuted —

with a sensitive soul, intelligence,

8 and an attractive face.

Nursing the ardor of the purest passion,

the always enthusiastic hero

was ready for self-sacrifice,

12 and by the end of the last part, vice always

got punished,

and virtue got a worthy crown.

XII

But nowadays all minds are in a mist,

a moral brings upon us somnolence,

vice is attractive in a novel, too,

4 and there, at least, it triumphs.

The fables of the British Muse

disturb the young girl’s sleep,

and now her idol has become

8 either the pensive Vampyre,

or Melmoth, gloomy vagabond,

or the Wandering Jew, or the Corsair,

or the mysterious Sbogar.19

12 Lord Byron, by an opportune caprice,

in woebegone romanticism

draped even hopeless egotism.

XIII

My friends, what sense is there in this?

Perhaps, by heaven’s will,

I’ll cease to be a poet; a new demon

4 will enter into me;

and having scorned the threats of Phoebus,

I shall descend to humble prose:

a novel in the ancient strain

8 will then engage my gay decline.

There, not the secret pangs of crime

shall I grimly depict,

but simply shall detail to you

12 the legends of a Russian family,

love’s captivating dreams,

and manners of our ancientry.

XIV

I shall detail a father’s, an old uncle’s,

plain speeches; the assigned

trysts of the children

4 by the old limes, by the small brook;

the throes of wretched jealousy,

parting, reconciliation’s tears;

once more I’ll have them quarrel, and at last

8 conduct them to the altar. I’ll recall

the accents of impassioned languish,

the words of aching love,

which in days bygone at the feet

12 of a fair mistress

came to my tongue;

from which I now have grown disused.

XV

Tatiana, dear Tatiana!

I now shed tears with you.

Into a fashionable tyrant’s hands

4 your fate already you’ve relinquished.

Dear, you shall perish; but before,

in dazzling hope,

you summon somber bliss,

8 you learn the dulcitude of life,

you quaff the magic poison of desires,

daydreams pursue you:

you fancy everywhere

12 retreats for happy trysts;

everywhere, everywhere before you,

is your fateful enticer.

XVI

The ache of love chases Tatiana,

and to the garden she repairs to brood,

and all at once her moveless eyes she lowers

4 and is too indolent farther to step;

her bosom has risen, her cheeks

are covered with an instant flame,

her breath has died upon her lips,

8 and there’s a singing in her ears, a flashing

before her eyes. Night comes; the moon

patrols the distant vault of heaven,

and in the gloam of trees the nightingale

12 intones sonorous chants.

Tatiana in the darkness does not sleep

and in low tones talks with her nurse.

XVII

“I can’t sleep, nurse: ’tis here so stuffy!

Open the window and sit down by me.”

“Why, Tanya, what’s the matter with you?” “I am dull.

4 Let’s talk about old days.”

“Well, what about them, Tanya? Time was, I

stored in my memory no dearth

of ancient haps and never-haps

8 about dire sprites and about maidens;

but everything to me is dark now, Tanya:

I have forgotten what I knew. Yes, things

have come now to a sorry pass!

12 I’m all befuddled.” “Nurse,

tell me about your old times. Were you then

in love?”

XVIII

“Oh, come, come, Tanya! In those years

we never heard of love;

elsewise my late mother-in-law

4 would have chased me right off the earth.”

“But how, then, were you wedded, nurse?”

“It looks as if God willed it so. My Vanya

was younger than myself, my sweet,

8 and I was thirteen. For two weeks or so

a woman matchmaker kept visiting

my kinsfolk, and at last

my father blessed me. Bitterly

12 I cried for fear; and, crying, they unbraided

my tress and, chanting,

they led me to the church.

XIX

“And so I entered a strange family.

But you’re not listening to me.”

“Oh, nurse, nurse, I feel dismal,

4 I’m sick at heart, my dear,

I’m on the point of crying, sobbing!”

“My child, you are not well;

the Lord have mercy upon us and save us!

8 What would you like, do ask.

Here, let me sprinkle you with holy water,

you’re all a-burning.” “I’m not ill;

I’m… do you know, nurse… I’m in love.”

12 “My child, the Lord be with you!”

And, uttering a prayer, the nurse

crossed with decrepit hand the girl.

XX

“I am in love,” anew she murmured

to the old woman mournfully.

“Sweetheart, you are not well.”

4 “Leave me. I am in love.”

And meantime the moon shone

and with dark light irradiated

the pale charms of Tatiana

8 and her loose hair,

and drops of tears, and, on a benchlet,

before the youthful heroine,

a kerchief on her hoary head, the little

12 old crone in a long “body warmer”;

and in the stillness everything

dozed by the inspirative moon.

XXI

And far away Tatiana’s heart was ranging

as she looked at the moon….

All of a sudden in her mind a thought was born….

4 “Go, let me be alone.

Give me, nurse, a pen, paper, and move up

the table; I shall soon lie down.

Good night.” Now she’s alone,

8 all’s still. The moon gives light to her.

Tatiana, leaning on her elbow, writes,

and Eugene’s ever present in her mind,

and in an unconsidered letter

12 the love of an innocent maid breathes forth.

The letter now is ready, folded.

Tatiana! Whom, then, is it for?

XXII

I’ve known belles inaccessible,

cold, winter-chaste;

inexorable, incorruptible,

4 unfathomable by the mind;

I marveled at their modish morgue,

at their natural virtue,

and, to be frank, I fled from them,

8 and I, meseems, with terror read

above their eyebrows Hell’s inscription:

“Abandon hope for evermore!”20

To inspire love is bale for them,

12 to frighten folks for them is joyance.

Perhaps, on the banks of the Neva

similar ladies you have seen.

XXIII

Amidst obedient admirers,

other odd females I have seen,

conceitedly indifferent

4 to sighs impassioned and to praise.

But what, to my amazement, did I find?

While, by austere demeanor,

they frightened timid love,

8 they had the knack of winning it again,

at least by their condolence;

at least the sound of spoken words

sometimes would seem more tender,

12 and with credulous blindness

again the youthful lover

pursued sweet vanity.

XXIV

Why is Tatiana, then, more guilty?

Is it because in sweet simplicity

deceit she knows not and believes

4 in her elected dream?

Is it because she loves without art, being

obedient to the bent of feeling?

Is it because she is so trustful

8 and is endowed by heaven

with a restless imagination,

intelligence, and a live will,

and headstrongness,

12 and a flaming and tender heart?

Are you not going to forgive her

the thoughtlessness of passions?

XXV

The coquette reasons coolly;

Tatiana in dead earnest loves

and unconditionally yields

4 to love like a sweet child.

She does not say: Let us defer;

thereby we shall augment love’s value,

inveigle into toils more surely;

8 let us first prick vainglory

with hope; then with perplexity

exhaust a heart, and then

revive it with a jealous fire,

12 for otherwise, cloyed with delight,

the cunning captive from his shackles

hourly is ready to escape.

XXVI

Another problem I foresee:

saving the honor of my native land,

undoubtedly I shall have to translate

4 Tatiana’s letter. She

knew Russian badly,

did not read our reviews,

and in her native tongue expressed herself

8 with difficulty. So,

she wrote in French.

What’s to be done about it! I repeat again;

as yet a lady’s love

12 has not expressed itself in Russian,

as yet our proud tongue has not got accustomed

to postal prose.

XXVII

I know: some would make ladies

read Russian. Horrible indeed!

Can I image them

4 with The Well-Meaner21 in their hands?

My poets, I appeal to you!

Is it not true that the sweet objects

for whom, to expiate your sins,

8 in secret you wrote verses,

to whom your hearts you dedicated —

did not they all, wielding the Russian language

poorly, and with difficulty,

12 so sweetly garble it,

and on their lips did not a foreign language

become a native one?

XXVIII

The Lord forbid my meeting at a ball

or at its breakup, on the porch,

a seminarian in a yellow shawl

4 or an Academician in a bonnet!

As vermeil lips without a smile,

without grammatical mistakes

I don’t like Russian speech.

8 Perchance (it would be my undoing!)

a generation of new belles,

heeding the magazines’ entreating voice,

to Grammar will accustom us;

12 verses will be brought into use.

Yet I… what do I care?

I shall be true to ancientry.

XXIX

An incorrect and careless patter,

an inexact delivery of words,

as heretofore a flutter of the heart

4 will in my breast produce;

in me there’s no force to repent;

to me will Gallicisms remain

as sweet as the sins of past youth,

8 as Bogdanóvich’s verse.

But that will do. ‘Tis time I busied

myself with my fair damsel’s letter;

my word I’ve given — and what now? Yea, yea!

12 I’m ready to back out of it.

I know: tender Parny’s

pen in our days is out of fashion.

XXX

Bard of The Feasts and languorous sadness,22

if you were still with me,

I would have troubled you,

4 dear