Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin [best books to read for teens TXT] 📗

Saturdays attended,
When angry beat her maids, I grieve,
And all without her husband’s leave. XXXIII

In her friends’ albums, time had been,
With blood instead of ink she scrawled,
Baptized Prascovia Pauline,
And in her conversation drawled.
She wore her corset tightly bound,
The Russian N with nasal sound
She would pronounce à la Française;
But soon she altered all her ways,
Corset and album and Pauline,
Her sentimental verses all,
She soon forgot, began to call
Akulka who was once Celine,
And had with waddling in the end
Her caps and night-dresses to mend.

XXXIV

As for her spouse he loved her dearly,
In her affairs ne’er interfered,
Entrusted all to her sincerely,
In dressing-gown at meals appeared.
Existence calmly sped along,
And oft at eventide a throng
Of friends unceremonious would
Assemble from the neighbourhood:
They growl a bit⁠—they scandalise⁠—
They crack a feeble joke and smile⁠—
Thus the time passes and meanwhile
Olga the tea must supervise⁠—
’Tis time for supper, now for bed,
And soon the friendly troop hath fled.

XXXV

They in a peaceful life preserved
Customs by ages sanctified,
Strictly the Carnival observed,
Ate Russian pancakes at Shrovetide,
Twice in the year to fast were bound,
Of whirligigs were very fond,
Of Christmas carols, song and dance;
When people with long countenance
On Trinity Sunday yawned at prayer,
Three tears they dropt with humble mein
Upon a bunch of lovage green;
Kvass needful was to them as air;
On guests their servants used to wait
By rank as settled by the State.33

XXXVI

Thus age approached, the common doom,
And death before the husband wide
Opened the portals of the tomb
And a new diadem supplied.34
Just before dinner-time he slept,
By neighbouring families bewept,
By children and by faithful wife
With deeper woe than others’ grief.
He was an honest gentleman,
And where at last his bones repose
The epitaph on marble shows:
Demetrius Larine, sinful man,
Servant of God and brigadier,
Enjoyeth peaceful slumber here.

XXXVII

To his Penates now returned,
Vladimir Lenski visited
His neighbour’s lowly tomb and mourned
Above the ashes of the dead.
There long time sad at heart he stayed:
“Poor Yorick,” mournfully he said,
“How often in thine arms I lay;
How with thy medal I would play,
The Medal Otchakoff conferred!35
To me he would his Olga give,
Would whisper: shall I so long live?”⁠—
And by a genuine sorrow stirred,
Lenski his pencil-case took out
And an elegiac poem wrote.

XXXVIII

Likewise an epitaph with tears
He writes upon his parents’ tomb,
And thus ancestral dust reveres.
Oh! on the fields of life how bloom
Harvests of souls unceasingly
By Providence’s dark decree!
They blossom, ripen and they fall
And others rise ephemeral!
Thus our light race grows up and lives,
A moment effervescing stirs,
Then seeks ancestral sepulchres,
The appointed hour arrives, arrives!
And our successors soon shall drive
Us from the world wherein we live.

XXXIX

Meantime, drink deeply of the flow
Of frivolous existence, friends;
Its insignificance I know
And care but little for its ends.
To dreams I long have closed mine eyes,
Yet sometimes banished hopes will rise
And agitate my heart again;
And thus it is ’twould cause me pain
Without the faintest trace to leave
This world. I do not praise desire,
Yet still apparently aspire
My mournful fate in verse to weave,
That like a friendly voice its tone
Rescue me from oblivion.

XL

Perchance some heart ’twill agitate,
And then the stanzas of my theme
Will not, preserved by kindly Fate,
Perish absorbed by Lethe’s stream.
Then it may be, O flattering tale,
Some future ignoramus shall
My famous portrait indicate
And cry: he was a poet great!
My gratitude do not disdain,
Admirer of the peaceful Muse,
Whose memory doth not refuse
My light productions to retain,
Whose hands indulgently caress
The bays of age and helplessness.

Canto the Third The Country Damsel36

“Elle était fille, elle était amoureuse.”

Malfilatre I

“Whither away? Deuce take the bard!”⁠—
“Good-bye, Onegin, I must go.”⁠—
“I won’t detain you; but ’tis hard
To guess how you the eve pull through.”⁠—
“At Làrina’s.”⁠—“Hem, that is queer!
Pray is it not a tough affair
Thus to assassinate the eve?”⁠—
“Not at all.”⁠—“That I can’t conceive!
’Tis something of this sort I deem.
In the first place, say, am I right?
A Russian household simple quite,
Who welcome guests with zeal extreme,
Preserves and an eternal prattle
About the rain and flax and cattle.”⁠—

II

“No misery I see in that”⁠—
“Boredom, my friend, behold the ill⁠—”
“Your fashionable world I hate,
Domestic life attracts me still,
Where⁠—”⁠—“What! another eclogue spin?
For God’s sake, Lenski, don’t begin!
What! really going? ’Tis too bad!
But Lenski, I should be so glad
Would you to me this Phyllis show,
Fair source of every fine idea,
Verses and tears et cetera.
Present me.”⁠—“You are joking.”⁠—“No.”⁠—
“Delighted.”⁠—“When?”⁠—“This very night.
They will receive us with delight.”

III

Whilst homeward by the nearest route
Our heroes at full gallop sped,
Can we not stealthily make out
What they in conversation said?⁠—
“How now, Onegin, yawning still?”⁠—
“ ’Tis habit, Lenski.”⁠—“Is your ill
More troublesome than usual?”⁠—“No!
How dark the night is getting though!
Hallo, Andriushka, onward race!
The drive becomes monotonous⁠—
Well! Làrina appears to us
An ancient lady full of grace.⁠—
That bilberry wine, I’m sore afraid,
The deuce with my inside has played.”

IV

“Say, of the two which was Tattiana?”
“She who with melancholy face
And silent as the maid Svetlana37
Hard by the window took her place.”⁠—
“The younger, you’re in love with her!”
“Well!”⁠—“I the elder should prefer,
Were I like you a bard by trade⁠—
In Olga’s face no life’s displayed.
’Tis a Madonna of Vandyk,
An oval countenance and pink,
Yon silly moon upon the brink
Of the horizon she is like!”⁠—
Vladimir something curtly said
Nor further comment that night made.

V

Meantime Onegin’s apparition
At Làrina’s abode produced
Quite a sensation; the position
To all good neighbours’ sport conduced.
Endless conjectures all propound
And secretly their views expound.
What jokes and guesses now abound,
A beau is for Tattiana found!
In fact, some people were assured
The wedding-day had been arranged,
But the date subsequently changed
Till proper rings could be procured.
On Lenski’s matrimonial fate
They long ago had held debate.

VI

Of course Tattiana was annoyed
By such allusions scandalous,
Yet was her inmost soul o’erjoyed
With satisfaction marvellous,
As in her heart the thought sank home,
I am in love, my hour hath come!
Thus in the earth the seed expands
Obedient to warm Spring’s commands.
Long time her young imagination
By indolence and languor fired
The fated nutriment desired;
And long internal agitation
Had filled her