My friends, what sense is there in this?
Perhaps, by heaven's will,
I'll cease to be a poet; a new demon
4 will enter into me;
and having scorned the threats of Phoebus,
I shall descend to humble prose:
a novel in the ancient strain
8 will then engage my gay decline.
There, not the secret pangs of crime
shall I grimly depict,
but simply shall detail to you
12 the legends of a Russian family,
love's captivating dreams,
and manners of our ancientry.
XIV
I shall detail a father's, an old uncle's,
plain speeches; the assigned
trysts of the children
4 by the old limes, by the small brook;
the throes of wretched jealousy,
parting, reconciliation's tears;
once more I'll have them quarrel, and at last
8 conduct them to the altar. I'll recall
the accents of impassioned languish,
the words of aching love,
which in days bygone at the feet
12 of a fair mistress
came to my tongue;
from which I now have grown disused.
XV
Tatiana, dear Tatiana!
I now shed tears with you.
Into a fashionable tyrant's hands
4 your fate already you've relinquished.
Dear, you shall perish; but before,
in dazzling hope,
you summon somber bliss,
8 you learn the dulcitude of life,
you quaff the magic poison of desires,
daydreams pursue you:
you fancy everywhere
12 retreats for happy trysts;
everywhere, everywhere before you,
is your fateful enticer.
XVI
The ache of love chases Tatiana,
and to the garden she repairs to brood,
and all at once her moveless eyes she lowers
4 and is too indolent farther to step;
her bosom has risen, her cheeks
are covered with an instant flame,
her breath has died upon her lips,
8 and there's a singing in her ears, a flashing
before her eyes. Night comes; the moon
patrols the distant vault of heaven,
and in the gloam of trees the nightingale
12 intones sonorous chants.
Tatiana in the darkness does not sleep
and in low tones talks with her nurse.
XVII
“I can't sleep, nurse: 'tis here so stuffy!
Open the window and sit down by me.”
“Why, Tanya, what's the matter with you?” “I am dull.
4 Let's talk about old days.”
“Well, what about them, Tanya? Time was, I
stored in my memory no dearth
of ancient haps and never-haps
8 about dire sprites and about maidens;
but everything to me is dark now, Tanya:
I have forgotten what I knew. Yes, things
have come now to a sorry pass!
12 I'm all befuddled.” “Nurse,
tell me about your old times. Were you then
in love?”
XVIII
“Oh, come, come, Tanya! In those years
we never heard of love;
elsewise my late mother-in-law
4 would have chased me right off the earth.”
“But how, then, were you wedded, nurse?”
“It looks as if God willed it so. My Vanya
was younger than myself, my sweet,
8 and I was thirteen. For two weeks or so
a woman matchmaker kept visiting
my kinsfolk, and at last
my father blessed me. Bitterly
12 I cried for fear; and, crying, they unbraided
my tress and, chanting,
they led me to the church.
XIX
“And so I entered a strange family.
But you're not listening to me.”
“Oh, nurse, nurse, I feel dismal,
4 I'm sick at heart, my dear,
I'm on the point of crying, sobbing!”
“My child, you are not well;
the Lord have mercy upon us and save us!
8 What would you like, do ask.
Here, let me sprinkle you with holy water,
you're all a-burning.” “I'm not ill;
I'm... do you know, nurse... I'm in love.”
12 “My child, the Lord be with you!”
And, uttering a prayer, the nurse
crossed with decrepit hand the girl.