“But I'm not made for bliss;
my soul is strange to it;
in vain are your perfections:
4 I'm not at all worthy of them.
Believe me (conscience is thereof the pledge),
wedlock to us would be a torment.
However much I loved you,
8 having grown used, I'd cease to love at once;
you would begin to weep; your tears
would fail to touch my heart —
they merely would exasperate it.
12 Judge, then, what roses
Hymen would lay in store for us —
and, possibly, for many days!
XV
“What in the world can be
worse than a family where the poor wife frets
over an undeserving husband
4 and day and evening is alone;
where the dull husband,
knowing her worth (yet cursing fate),
is always sullen, silent, cross,
8 and coldly jealous?
Thus I. And is it this you sought
with pure flaming soul when
with such simplicity,
12 with such intelligence, to me you wrote?
Can it be true that such a portion
is by stern fate assigned to you?
XVI
“For dreams and years there's no return;
I shall not renovate my soul.
I love you with a brother's love
4 and maybe still more tenderly.
So listen to me without wrath:
a youthful maid will more than once
for dreams exchange light dreams;
8 a sapling thus its leaves
changes with every spring.
By heaven thus 'tis evidently destined.
Again you will love; but.
12 learn to control yourself;
not everyone as I will understand you;
to trouble inexperience leads.”
XVII
Thus Eugene preached.
Nought seeing through her tears,
scarce breathing, without protests,
4 Tatiana listened to him.
His arm to her he offered. Sadly
(as it is said: “mechanically”),
Tatiana leaned on it in silence,
8 bending her languid little head;
homeward [they] went around the kitchen garden;
together they arrived, and none
dreamt of reproving them for this:
12 its happy rights
has country freedom
as well as haughty Moscow has.
XVIII
You will agree, my reader,
that very nicely did our pal
act toward melancholy Tanya;
4 not for the first time here did he reveal
a real nobility of soul,
though people's ill will
spared nothing in him:
8 his foes, his friends
(which, maybe, are the same)
upbraided him this way and that.
Foes upon earth has everyone,
12 but God preserve us from our friends!
Ah me, those friends, those friends!
Not without cause have I recalled them.
XIX
What's that? Oh, nothing. I am lulling
empty black reveries;
I only in parenthesis observe
4 that there's no despicable slander
spawned in a garret by a babbler
and by the rabble of the monde encouraged,
that there's no such absurdity,
8 nor vulgar epigram,
that with a smile your friend
in a circle of decent people
without the slightest malice or design
12 will not repeat a hundred times in error;
yet he professes to stand up for you:
he loves you so!... Oh, like a kinsman!
XX
Hm, hm, gent reader,
are all your kindred well?
Allow me; you might want, perhaps,
4 to learn from me now what exactly
is meant by “kinsfolks”?
Well, here's what kinsfolks are:
we are required to pet them, love them,
8 esteem them cordially,
and, following popular custom,
come Christmas, visit them, or else
congratulate them postally,
12 so that for the remainder of the year
they will not think about us.
So grant them, God, long life!