Flowers, love, the country, idleness,
ye fields! my soul is vowed to you.
I'm always glad to mark the difference
4 between Onegin and myself,
lest a sarcastic reader
or else some publisher
of complicated calumny,
8 collating here my traits,
repeat thereafter shamelessly
that I have scrawled my portrait
like Byron, the poet of pride
12 — as if we were no longer able
to write long poems
on any other subject than ourselves!
LVII
In this connection I'll observe: all poets
are friends of fancifying love.
It used to happen that dear objects
4 I'd dream of, and my soul
preserved their secret image;
the Muse revived them later:
thus I, carefree, would sing
8 a maiden of the mountains, my ideal,
as well as captives of the Salgir's banks.
From you, my friends, at present
not seldom do I hear the question:
12 “For whom does your lyre sigh?
To whom did you, among the throng
of jealous maidens, dedicate its strain?
LVIII
Whose gaze, while stirring inspiration,
with a dewy caress rewarded
your pensive singing? Whom did your
4 verse idolize?”
Faith, nobody, my friends, I swear!
Love's mad anxiety
I cheerlessly went through.
8 Happy who blent with it the fever
of rhymes: thereby the sacred frenzy
of poetry he doubled,
striding in Petrarch's tracks;
12 as to the heart's pangs, he allayed them
and meanwhile fame he captured too —
but I, when loving, was stupid and mute.
LIX
Love passed, the Muse appeared,
and the dark mind cleared up.
Once free, I seek again the concord
4 of magic sounds, feelings, and thoughts;
I write, and the heart does not pine;
the pen draws not, lost in a trance,
next to unfinished lines,
8 feminine feet or heads;
extinguished ashes will not flare again;
I still feel sad; but there are no more tears,
and soon, soon the storm's trace
12 will hush completely in my souclass="underline"
then I shall start to write a poem
in twenty-five cantos or so.
LX
I've thought already of a form of plan
and how my hero I shall call.
Meantime, my novel's
4 first chapter I have finished;
all this I have looked over closely;
the inconsistencies are very many,
but to correct them I don't wish.
8 I shall pay censorship its due
and give away my labors' fruits
to the reviewers for devourment.
Be off, then, to the Neva's banks,
12 newborn work! And deserve for me
fame's tribute: false interpretations,
noise, and abuse!
CHAPTER TWO
O rus!
Horace
O Rus'!
I
The country place where Eugene
moped was a charming nook;
a friend of innocent delights
4 might have blessed heaven there.
The manor house, secluded,
screened from the winds by a hill, stood
above a river; in the distance,
8 before it, freaked and flowered, lay
meadows and golden grainfields;
one could glimpse hamlets here and there;
herds roamed the meadows;
12 and its dense coverts spread
a huge neglected garden, the retreat
of pensive dryads.
II
The venerable castle
was built as castles should be built:
excellent strong and comfortable
4 in the taste of sensible ancientry.
Tall chambers everywhere,
hangings of damask in the drawing room,
portraits of grandsires on the walls,
8 and stoves with varicolored tiles.
All this today is obsolete,
I really don't know why;
and anyway it was a matter
12 of very little moment to my friend,
since he yawned equally amidst
modish and olden halls.