Never know these frightful dreams, You, O my Svetlana!
Zhukovski
I
That year autumnal weather
was a long time abroad;
nature kept waiting and waiting for winter.
4 Snow only fell in January,
on the night of the second. Waking early,
Tatiana from the window saw
at morn the whitened yard,
8 flower beds, roofs, and fence;
delicate patterns on the panes;
the trees in winter silver,
gay magpies outside,
12 and the hills softly overspread
with winter's brilliant carpeting.
All's bright, all's white around.
II
Winter! The peasant, celebrating,
in a flat sledge inaugurates the track;
his naggy, having sensed the snow,
4 shambles at something like a trot.
Plowing up fluffy furrows,
a bold kibitka flies:
the driver sits upon his box
8 in sheepskin coat, red-sashed.
Here runs about a household lad,
upon a hand sled having seated “blackie,”
having transformed himself into the steed;
12 the scamp already has frozen a finger.
He finds it both painful and funny — while
his mother, from the window, threatens him...
III
But, maybe, pictures of this kind
will not attract you;
all this is lowly nature;
4 there is not much refinement here.
Warmed by the god of inspiration,
another poet in luxurious language
for us has painted the first snow
8 and all the shades of winter's delectations.27 He'll captivate you, I am sure of it,
when he depicts in flaming verses
secret promenades in sleigh;
12 but I have no intention of contending
either with him at present or with you,
singer of the young Finnish Maid!28
IV
Tatiana (being Russian
at heart, herself not knowing why)
loved, in all its cold beauty,
4 a Russian winter:
rime in the sun upon a frosty day,
and sleighs, and, at late dawn,
the radiance of the rosy snows,
8 and gloam of Twelfthtide eves.
Those evenings in the ancient fashion
were celebrated in their house:
the servant girls from the whole stead
12 told their young ladies' fortunes
and every year made prophecies to them
of military husbands and the march.
V
Tatiana credited the lore
of plain-folk ancientry,
dreams, cartomancy,
4 prognostications by the moon.
Portents disturbed her:
mysteriously all objects
foretold her something,
8 presentiments constrained her breast.
The mannered tomcat sitting on the stove,
purring, would wash his muzzlet with his paw:
to her 'twas an indubitable sign
12 that guests were coming. Seeing all at once
the young two-horned moon's visage
in the sky on her left,
VI
she trembled and grew pale.
Or when a falling star
along the dark sky flew
4 and dissipated, then
in agitation Tanya hastened
to whisper, while the star still rolled,
her heart's desire to it.
8 When anywhere she happened
a black monk to encounter,
or a swift hare amid the fields
would run across her path,
12 so scared she knew not what to undertake,
full of grievous forebodings,
already she expected some mishap.
VII
Yet — in her very terror
she found a secret charm:
thus has created us
4 nature, inclined to contradictions.
Yuletide is here. Now that is joy!
Volatile youth divines —
who nought has to regret,
8 in front of whom the faraway of life
extends luminous, boundless;
old age divines, through spectacles,
at its sepulchral slab,
12 all having irrecoverably lost;
nor does it matter: hope to them
lies with its childish lisp.