Eugene Onegin. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

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