ringing

throughout the ages. There awaited

the poet, on the stairway of the world,

perhaps, a lofty stair.

8 His martyred shade has carried

away with him, perhaps,

a sacred mystery, and for us

dead is a life-creating voice,

12 and to his shade beyond the tomb’s confines

will not rush up the hymn of races,

the blessing of the ages.

XXXIX

And then again: perhaps,

an ordinary lot awaited

the poet. Years of youth would have elapsed:

4 in him the soul’s fire would have cooled.

He would have changed in many ways,

have parted with the Muses, married,

up in the country, happy and cornute,

8 have worn a quilted dressing gown;

learned life in its reality,

at forty, had the gout,

drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,

12 and in his bed, at last,

died in the midst of children,

weepy females, and medicos.

XL

But, reader, be it as it may,

alas, the young lover, the poet,

the pensive dreamer, has been killed

4 by a friend’s hand!

There is a spot: left of the village

where inspiration’s nursling dwelt,

two pine trees grow, united at the roots;

8 beneath them have meandered streamlets

of the neighboring valley’s brook.

‘Tis there the plowman likes to rest

and women reapers come to dip

12 their ringing pitchers in the waves;

there, by the brook, in the dense shade

a simple monument is set.

XLI

Beneath it (as begins to drip

spring rain upon the herb of fields)

the herdsman, plaiting his pied shoe of bast,

4 sings of the Volga fishermen;

and the young townswoman who spends

the summer in the country,

when headlong on horseback, alone,

8 she scours the fields,

before it halts her steed,

tightening the leathern rein;

and, turning up the gauze veil of her hat,

12 she reads with skimming eyes

the plain inscription — and a tear

dims her soft eyes.

XLII

And at a walk she rides in open champaign,

sunk in a reverie;

a long time, willy-nilly,

4 her soul is full of Lenski’s fate;

and she reflects: “What has become of Olga?

Did her heart suffer long?

Or did the season of her tears soon pass?

8 And where’s her sister now? And where, that shunner

of people and the world,

of modish belles the modish foe,

where’s that begloomed eccentric,

12 the slayer of the youthful poet?”

In due time I shall give you an account

in detail about everything.

XLIII

But not now. Though with all my heart

I love my hero;

though I’ll return to him, of course;

4 but now I am not in the mood for him.

The years to austere prose incline,

the years chase pranksome rhyme away,

and I — with a sigh I confess —

8 more indolently dangle after her.

My pen has not its ancient disposition

to mar with scribblings fleeting leaves;

other chill dreams,

12 other stern cares,

both in the social hum and in the still

disturb my soul’s sleep.

XLIV

I have learned the voice of other desires,

I’ve come to know new sadness;

I have no expectations for the first,

4 and the old sadness I regret.

Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?

Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?

Can it be really true

8 that withered, withered is at last its garland?

Can it be true that really and indeed,

without elegiac conceits,

the springtime of my days is fled

12 (as I in jest kept saying hitherto),

and has it truly no return?

Can it be true that I’ll be thirty soon?

XLV

So! My noontide is come, and this

I must, I see, admit.

But, anyway, as friends let’s part,

4 O my light youth!

My thanks for the delights,

the melancholy, the dear torments,

the hum, the storms, the feasts,

8 for all, for all your gifts

my thanks to you. In you

amidst turmoils and in the stillness

I have delighted… and in full.

12 Enough! With a clear soul

I now set out on a new course

to rest from my old life.

XLVI

Let me glance back. Farewell now, coverts

where in the backwoods flowed my days,

fulfilled with passions and with indolence

4 and with the dreamings of a pensive soul.

And you, young inspiration,

stir my imagination,

the slumber of the heart enliven,

8 into my nook more often fly,

let not a poet’s soul grow cold,

callous, crust-dry,

and finally be turned to stone

12 in the World’s deadening intoxication

in that slough where with you

I bathe, dear friends!40

CHAPTER SEVEN

Moscow! Russia’s favorite daughter!

Where is your equal to be found?

Dmitriev

How not to love one’s native Moscow?

Baratïnski

“Reviling Moscow! This is what

comes from seeing the world! Where is it better, then?”

“Where we are not.”

Griboedov

I

Chased by the vernal beams,

down the surrounding hills the snows already

have run in turbid streams

4 onto the inundated fields.

With a serene smile, nature

greets through her sleep the morning of the year.

Bluing, the heavens shine.

8 The yet transparent woods

as if with down are greening.

The bee flies from her waxen cell

after the tribute of the field.

12 The dales grow dry and varicolored.

The herds are noisy, and the nightingale

has sung already in the hush of nights.

II

How sad your apparition is to me,

spring, spring, season of love!

What a dark stir there is

4 in my soul, in my blood!

With what oppressive tenderness

I revel in the whiff

of spring fanning my face

8 in the lap of the rural stillness!

Or is enjoyment strange to me,

and all that gladdens, animates,

all that exults and gleams,

12 casts spleen and languishment

upon a soul long dead

and all looks dark to it?

III

Or gladdened not by the return

of leaves that perished in the autumn,

a bitter loss we recollect,

4 harking to the new murmur of the woods;

or with reanimated nature we

compare in troubled thought

the withering of our years,

8 for which there is no renovation?

Perhaps there comes into our thoughts,

midst a poetical reverie,

some other ancient spring,

12 which sets our heart aquiver

with the dream of a distant clime,

a marvelous night, a moon….

IV

Now is the time: good lazybones,

epicurean sages; you,

equanimous fortunates;

4 you, fledglings of the Lyóvshin41 school;

you, country Priams;

and sentimental ladies, you;

spring calls you to the country,

8 season of warmth, of flowers, of labors,

of inspired rambles,

and of seductive nights.

Friends! to the fields, quick, quick;

12 in heavy loaden chariots;

with your own horses or with posters;

out of the towngates start to trek!

V

And you, indulgent reader,

in your imported calash, leave

the indefatigable city

4 where in the winter you caroused;

let’s go with my capricious Muse

to hear the murmur of a park

above a nameless river, in the country place,

8 where my Eugene, an idle and despondent

recluse, but recently

dwelt in the winter, in the neighborhood

of youthful Tanya,

12 of my dear dreamer;

but where he is no longer now…

where a sad trace he left.

VI

‘Mid hills disposed in a half circle,

let us go thither where a rill,

winding, by way of a green meadow,

4 runs to the river through a linden bosquet.

The nightingale, spring’s lover,

sings there all night; the cinnamon rose

blooms, and the babble of the fount is heard.

8 There a tombstone is seen

in the shade of two ancient pines.

The scripture to the stranger says:

“Here lies Vladimir Lenski,

12 who early died the death of the courageous,

in such a year, at such an age.

Repose, boy poet!”

VII

On the inclined bough of a pine,

time was, the early breeze

above that humble urn

4 swayed a mysterious wreath;

time was, during late leisures,

two girl companions hither used to come;

and, by the moon, upon the grave,

8 embraced, they wept;

but now… the drear memorial is

forgot. The wonted trail to it,

weed-choked. No wreath is on the bough.

12 Alone, beneath it, gray and feeble,

the herdsman as before keeps singing

and plaiting his poor footgear.

X

My poor Lenski! Pining away,

she did not weep for long.

Alas! The young fiancée

4 is to her woe untrue.

Another ravished her attention,

another managed with love’s flattery

to lull to sleep her suffering:

8 an uhlan knew how to enthrall her,

an uhlan by her soul is loved;

and lo! with him already at the altar

she modestly beneath the bridal crown

12 stands with bent head,

fire in her lowered eyes,

a light smile on her lips.

XI

My poor Lenski! Beyond the grave,

in the confines of deaf eternity,

was the despondent bard perturbed

4 by the fell news of the betrayal?

Or on the Lethe lulled to sleep,

blest with insensibility, the poet

no longer is perturbed by anything,

8 and closed and mute is earth to him?…

‘Tis so! Indifferent oblivion

beyond the sepulcher awaits us.

The voice of foes, of friends, of loves abruptly

12 falls silent. Only over the estate

the angry chorus of the heirs

starts an indecent squabble.

XII

And soon the ringing voice of Olya

was in the Larin family stilled.

A captive of his lot, the uhlan

4 had to rejoin his regiment with her.

Bitterly shedding floods of tears,

the old dame, as she took leave of her daughter,

seemed scarce alive,

8 but Tanya could not cry;

only a deadly pallor covered

her melancholy face.

When everybody came out on the porch,

12 and one and all, taking leave, bustled

around the chariot of the newly wed,

Tatiana saw them off.

XIII

And long did she, as through a mist,

gaze after them…

And now Tatiana is alone, alone!

4 Alas! Companion of so many years,

her youthful doveling,

her own dear bosom friend,

has been by fate borne far away,

8 has been from her forever separated.

She, like a shade, roams aimlessly;

now into the deserted garden looks.

Nowhere, in nothing, are there joys for her,

12 and she finds no relief

for tears suppressed,

and torn asunder is her heart.

XIV

And in the cruel solitude

stronger her passion burns,

and louder does her heart of distant

4 Onegin speak to her.

She will not see him;

she must abhor in him

the slayer of her brother;

8 the poet perished… but already none

remembers him, already to another

his promised bride has given herself.

The poet’s memory has sped by

12 as smoke across an azure sky;

perhaps there are two hearts that yet

grieve for him…. Wherefore grieve?

XV

‘Twas evening. The sky darkened. Waters

streamed quietly. The beetle churred.

The choral throngs already were dispersing.

4 Across the river, smoking, glowed already

the fire of fishermen. In open country

by the moon’s silvery light,

sunk in her dreams,

8 long did Tatiana walk alone. She walked,

she walked. And suddenly before her from a hill

she sees a manor house, a village,

a grove below hill, and a garden

12 above a luminous river.

She gazes, and the heart in her

faster and harder has begun to beat.

XVI

Doubts trouble her:

“Shall I go on? Shall I go back?… He is not here.

They do not know me…. I shall glance

4 at the house, at that garden.”

And so downhill Tatiana walks,

scarce breathing; casts around

a gaze full of perplexity…

8 and enters a deserted