Eugene Oneguine [Onegin]. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

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.[84]
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.

 

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.[85]

XIV