Tatiana with a curious gaze
looks at the submerged wax:
with its wondrously cast design,
4 to her a wondrous something it proclaims.
From a dish full of water
rings come out in succession;
and when her ring turned up,
8 'twas to a ditty of the ancient days:
“There all the countrymen are rich;
they heap up silver by the spadeful!
To those we sing to will come Good
12 and Glory!” But portends bereavements
the pitiful tune of this dit:
to maidens' hearts sweeter is “Kit.”29
IX
The night is frosty; the whole sky is clear;
the splendid choir of heavenly luminaries
so gently, so unisonally flows....
4 Tatiana, in her low-cut frock,
into the wide courtyard comes out;
she trains a mirror on the moon;
but in the dark glass only
8 the sad moon trembles....
Hark!... the snow creaks... a passer-by; the maiden
flits up to him on tiptoe —
and her little voice sounds
12 more tender than a reed pipe's strain:
“What is your name?”30 He looks,
and answers: “Agafón.”
X
On the nurse's advice, Tatiana,
planning that night to conjure,
has ordered in the bathhouse secretly
4 a table to be laid for two.
But suddenly Tatiana is afraid....
And I — at the thought of Svetlana —
I am afraid; so let it be...
8 we're not to conjure with Tatiana.
Tatiana has removed
her silken sash, undressed,
and gone to bed. Lel hovers over her,
12 while under her pillow of down
there lies a maiden's looking glass.
Now all is hushed. Tatiana sleeps.
XI
And dreams a wondrous dream Tatiana.
She dreams that she
over a snowy lawn is walking,
4 surrounded by sad gloom.
In front of her, between the snowdrifts,
dins, swirls its wave
a churning, dark, and hoary torrent,
8 by the winter not chained; two thin poles, glued
together by a piece of ice
(a shaky, perilous small bridge),
are laid across the torrent; and before
12 the dinning deep,
full of perplexity,
she stopped.
XII
As at a vexing separation,
Tatiana murmurs at the brook;
sees nobody who from the other side
4 might offer her a hand.
But suddenly a snowdrift stirred,
and who appeared from under it?
A large bear with a ruffled coat;
8 Tatiana uttered “Ach!” and he went roaring
and a paw with sharp claws
stretched out to her. Nerving herself,
she leaned on it with trembling hand
12 and worked her way with apprehensive steps
across the brook; walked on —
and what then? The bear followed her.
XIII
She, to look back not daring,
accelerates her hasty step;
but from the shaggy footman
4 can in no way escape;
grunting, the odious bear keeps lumbering on.
Before them is a wood; the pines
are stirless in their frowning beauty;
8 all their boughs are weighed down
by snow flocks; through the summits
of aspens, birches, lindens bare
the beam of the night luminaries shines;
12 there is no path; shrubs, precipices, all
are drifted over by the blizzard,
plunged deep in snow.
XIV
Into the forest goes Tatiana; the bear follows;
up to her knee comes yielding snow;
now by the neck a long branch suddenly
4 catches her, or by force it tears
out of her ears their golden pendants;
now in the crumbly snow sticks fast
a small wet shoe come off her charming foot;
8 now she lets fall her handkerchief —
she has no time to pick it up,
is frightened, hears the bear behind her,
and even is too shy to raise
12 with tremulous hand the hem of her dress;
she runs; he keeps behind her;
and then she has no force to run.