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
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!
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, Saint 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?
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?
The same unmoved oblivion
On us beyond the grave attends,
The voice of lovers, foes and friends,
Dies suddenly: of heirs alone
Remains on earth the unseemly rage,
Whilst struggling for the heritage.
X
Soon Olga’s accents shrill resound
No longer through her former home;
The lancer, to his calling bound,
Back to his regiment must roam.
The aged mother, bathed in tears,
Distracted by her grief appears
When the hour came to bid good-bye —
But my Tattiana’s eyes were dry.
Only her countenance assumed
A deadly pallor, air distressed;
When all around the entrance pressed,
To say farewell, and fussed and fumed
Around the carriage of the pair —
Tattiana gently led them there.
XI
And long her eyes as through a haze
After the wedded couple strain;
Alas! the friend of childish days
Away, Tattiana, hath been ta’en.
Thy dove, thy darling little pet
On whom a sister’s heart was set
Afar is borne by cruel fate,
For evermore is separate.
She wanders aimless as a sprite,
Into the tangled garden goes
But nowhere can she find repose,
Nor even tears afford respite,
Of consolation all bereft —
Well nigh her heart in twain was cleft.
XII
In cruel solitude each day
With flame more ardent passion burns,
And to Oneguine far away
Her heart importunately turns.
She never more his face may view,
For was it not her duty to
Detest him for a brother slain?
The poet fell; already men
No more remembered him; unto
Another his betrothed was given;
The memory of the bard was driven
Like smoke athwart the heaven blue;
Two hearts perchance were desolate
And mourned him still. Why mourn his fate?
XIII
‘Twas eve. ‘Twas dusk. The river speeds
In tranquil flow. The beetle hums.
Already dance to song proceeds;
The fisher’s fire afar illumes
The river’s bank. Tattiana lone
Beneath the silver of the moon
Long time in meditation deep
Her path across the plain doth keep —
Proceeds, until she from a hill
Sees where a noble mansion stood,
A village and beneath, a wood,
A garden by a shining rill.
She gazed thereon, and instant beat
Her heart more loudly and more fleet.
XIV
She hesitates, in doubt is thrown —
“Shall I proceed, or homeward flee?
He is not there: I am not known:
The house and garden I would see.”
Tattiana from the hill descends
With bated breath, around she bends
A countenance perplexed and scared.
She enters a deserted yard —
Yelping, a pack of dogs rush out,
But at her shriek ran forth with noise
The household troop of little boys,
Who with a scuffle and a shout
The curs away to kennel chase,
The damsel under escort place.
XV
“Can I inspect the mansion, please?”
Tattiana asks, and hurriedly
Unto Anicia for the keys
The family of children hie.
Anicia soon appears, the door
Opens unto her visitor.
Into the lonely house she went,
Wherein a space Oneguine spent.
She gazed — a cue, forgotten long,
Doth on the billiard table rest,
Upon the tumbled sofa placed,
A riding whip. She strolls along.
The beldam saith: “The hearth, by it
The master always used to sit.
XVI
“Departed Lenski here to dine
In winter time would often come.
Please follow this way, lady mine,
This is my master’s sitting-room.
‘Tis here he slept, his coffee took,
Into accounts would sometimes look,
A book at early morn perused.
The room my former master used.
On Sundays by yon window he,
Spectacles upon nose, all day
Was wont with me at cards to play.
God save his soul eternally
And grant his weary bones their rest
Deep in our mother Earth’s chill breast!”
XVII
Tattiana’s eyes with tender gleam
On everything around her gaze,
Of priceless value all things seem
And in her languid bosom raise
A pleasure though with sorrow knit:
The table with its lamp unlit,
The pile of books, with carpet spread
Beneath the window-sill his bed,
The landscape which the moonbeams fret,
The twilight pale which softens all,
Lord Byron’s portrait on the wall
And the cast-iron statuette
With folded arms and eyes bent low,
Cocked hat and melancholy brow.(69)
[Note 69: The Russians not unfrequently adorn their apartments with effigies of the great Napoleon.]
XVIII
Long in this fashionable cell
Tattiana as enchanted stood;
But it grew late; cold blew the gale;
Dark was the valley and the wood
slept o’er the river misty grown.
Behind the mountain sank the moon.
Long, long the hour had past when home
Our youthful wanderer should roam.
She hid the trouble of her breast,
Heaved an involuntary sigh
And turned to leave immediately,
But first perm
ission did request
Thither in future to proceed
That certain volumes she might read.
XIX
Adieu she to the matron said
At the front gates, but in brief space
At early morn returns the maid
To the abandoned dwelling-place.
When in the study’s calm retreat,
Wrapt in oblivion complete,
She found herself alone at last,
Longtime her tears flowed thick and fast;
But presently she tried to read;
At first for books was disinclined,
But soon their choice seemed to her mind
Remarkable. She then indeed
Devoured them with an eager zest.
A new world was made manifest!
XX
Although we know that Eugene had
Long ceased to be a reading man,
Still certain authors, I may add,
He had excepted from the ban:
The bard of Juan and the Giaour,
With it may be a couple more;
Romances three, in which ye scan
Portrayed contemporary man
As the reflection of his age,
His immorality of mind
To arid selfishness resigned,
A visionary personage
With his exasperated sense,
His energy and impotence.
XXI
And numerous pages had preserved
The sharp incisions of his nail,
And these the attentive maid observed
With eye precise and without fail.
Tattiana saw with trepidation
By what idea or observation
Oneguine was the most impressed,
In what he merely acquiesced.
Upon those margins she perceived
Oneguine’s pencillings. His mind
Made revelations undesigned,
Of what he thought and what believed,
A dagger, asterisk, or note
Interrogation to denote.
XXII
And my Tattiana now began
To understand by slow degrees
More clearly, God be praised, the man,
Whom autocratic fate’s decrees
Had bid her sigh for without hope —
A dangerous, gloomy misanthrope,
Being from hell or heaven sent,
Angel or fiend malevolent.
Which is he? or an imitation,
A bogy conjured up in joke,
A Russian in Childe Harold’s cloak,
Of foreign whims the impersonation —
Handbook of fashionable phrase
Or parody of modern ways?
XXIII
Hath she found out the riddle yet?
Hath she a fitting phrase selected?
But time flies and she doth forget
They long at home have her expected —
Whither two neighbouring dames have walked
And a long time about her talked.
“What can be done? She is no child!”
Cried the old dame with anguish filled:
“Olinka is her junior, see.
‘Tis time to many her, ‘tis true,