Stirless he lay, and strange
was his brow's languid peace.
Under the breast he had been shot clean through;
4 steaming, the blood flowed from the wound.
One moment earlier
in this heart inspiration,
enmity, hope, and love had throbbed,
8 life effervesced, blood burned;
now, as in a deserted house,
all in it is both still and dark,
it has become forever silent.
12 The window boards are shut. The panes with chalk
are whitened over. The chatelaine is gone.
But where, God wot. All trace is lost.
XXXIII
With an insolent epigram
'tis pleasant to enrage a bungling foe;
pleasant to see how, bending stubbornly
4 his buttsome horns, he in the mirror
looks at himself involuntarily
and is ashamed to recognize himself;
more pleasant, friends, if, as the fool he is,
8 he howls out: It is I!
Still pleasanter — in silence to prepare
an honorable grave for him
and quietly at his pale forehead
12 aim, at a gentlemanly distance;
but to dispatch him to his fathers
will hardly pleasant be for you.
XXXIV
What, then, if by your pistol
be smitten a young pal
who with a saucy glance or repartee
4 or any other bagatelle
insulted you over the bottle,
or even himself, in fiery vexation,
to combat proudly challenged you?
8 Say: what sensation
would take possession of your soul
when, motionless upon the ground,
in front of you, with death upon his brow,
12 he by degrees would stiffen,
when he'd be deaf
and silent to your desperate appeal?
XXXV
In anguish of the heart's remorse,
his hand squeezing the pistol,
at Lenski Eugene looks.
4 “Well, what — he's dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
Dead!... With this dreadful interjection
smitten, Onegin with a shudder
walks hence and calls his men.
8 Zaretski carefully lays on the sleigh
the frozen corpse;
home he is driving the dread lading.
Sensing the corpse,
12 the horses snort and jib,
with white foam wetting the steel bit,
and like an arrow off they fly.
XXXVI
My friends, you're sorry for the poet:
in the bloom of glad hopes,
not having yet fulfilled them for the world,
4 scarce out of infant clothes,
withered! Where is the ardent stir,
the noble aspiration
of young emotions and young thoughts,
8 exalted, tender, bold?
Where are love's turbulent desires,
the thirst for knowledges and work,
the dread of vice and shame,
12 and you, fond musings,
you, [token] of unearthly life,
you, dreams of sacred poetry!
XXXVII
Perhaps, for the world's good
or, at the least, for glory he was born;
his silenced lyre might have aroused
4 a resonant, uninterrupted ringing
throughout the ages. There awaited
the poet, on the stairway of the world,
perhaps, a lofty stair.
8 His martyred shade has carried
away with him, perhaps,
a sacred mystery, and for us
dead is a life-creating voice,
12 and to his shade beyond the tomb's confines
will not rush up the hymn of races,
the blessing of the ages.
XXXIX
And then again: perhaps,
an ordinary lot awaited
the poet. Years of youth would have elapsed:
4 in him the soul's fire would have cooled.
He would have changed in many ways,
have parted with the Muses, married,
up in the country, happy and cornute,
8 have worn a quilted dressing gown;
learned life in its reality,
at forty, had the gout,
drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,
12 and in his bed, at last,
died in the midst of children,
weepy females, and medicos.