Eugene Onegin. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

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?