Là, sotto i giorni nubilosi e brevi,Nasce una gente a cui '1 morir non dole.
Petr.
I
On noticing that Vladimir had vanished,
Onegin, by ennui pursued again,
by Olga's side sank into meditation,
4 pleased with his vengeance.
After him Ólinka yawned too,
sought Lenski with her eyes,
and the endless cotillion
8 irked her like an oppressive dream.
But it has ended. They go in to supper.
The beds are made. Guests are assigned
night lodgings — from the entrance hall
12 even to the maids' quarters. Restful sleep
by all is needed. My Onegin
alone has driven home to sleep.
II
All has grown quiet. In the drawing room
the heavy Pustyakov
snores with his heavy better half.
4 Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov,
and Flyanov (who is not quite well)
have bedded in the dining room on chairs,
with, on the floor, Monsieur Triquet
8 in underwaistcoat and old nightcap.
All the young ladies, in Tatiana's
and Olga's rooms, are wrapped in sleep.
Alone, sadly by Dian's beam
12 illumined at the window, poor Tatiana
is not asleep
and gazes out on the dark field.
III
With his unlooked-for apparition,
the momentary softness of his eyes,
and odd conduct with Olga,
4 to the depth of her soul
she's penetrated. She is quite unable
to understand him. Jealous
anguish perturbs her,
8 as if a cold hand pressed
her heart; as if beneath her an abyss
yawned black and dinned....
“I shall perish,” says Tanya,
12 “but perishing from him is sweet.
I murmur not: why murmur?
He cannot give me happiness.”
IV
Forward, forward, my story!
A new persona claims us.
Five versts from Krasnogórie,
4 Lenski's estate, there lives
and thrives up to the present time
in philosophical reclusion
Zarétski, formerly a brawler,
8 the hetman of a gaming gang,
chieftain of rakehells, pothouse tribune,
but now a kind and simple
bachelor paterfamilias,
12 a steadfast friend, a peaceable landowner,
and even an honorable man:
thus does our age correct itself!
V
Time was, the monde's obsequious voice
used to extol his wicked pluck:
he, it is true, could from a pistol
4 at twelve yards hit an ace,
and, furthermore, in battle too
once, in real rapture, he distinguished
himself by toppling from his Kalmuk steed
8 boldly into the mud,
swine drunk, and to the French
fell prisoner (prized hostage!) —
a modern Regulus, the god of honor,
12 ready to yield anew to bonds
so as to drain on credit at Véry's37 two or three bottles every morning.
VI
Time was, he bantered drolly,
knew how to gull a fool
and capitally fool a clever man,
4 for all to see or on the sly;
though some tricks of his, too,
did not remain unchastised;
though sometimes he himself, too, got
8 trapped like a simpleton.
He knew how to conduct a gay dispute,
make a reply keen or obtuse,
now craftily to hold his tongue,
12 now craftily to raise a rumpus,
how to get two young friends to quarrel
and place them on the marked-out ground,
VII
or have them make it up
so as to lunch all three,
and later secretly defame them
4 with a gay quip, with prate....
Sed alia tempora! Daredevilry
(like love's dream, yet another caper)
passes with lively youth.
8 As I've said, my Zarétski,
beneath the racemosas and the pea trees
having at last found shelter
from tempests, lives like a true sage,
12 plants cabbages like Horace,
breeds ducks and geese,
and teaches [his] children the A B C.