Евгений Онегин / Eugene Onegin

He thought to write, but labour long

Inspired him with disgust and so

Nought from his pen did ever flow,

And thus he never fell among

That vicious set whom I don’t blame —

Because a member I became.

XXXVIII

Once more to idleness consigned,

He felt the laudable desire

From mere vacuity of mind

The wit of others to acquire.

A case of books he doth obtain —

He reads at random, reads in vain.

This nonsense, that dishonest seems,

This wicked, that absurd he deems,

All are constrained and fetters bear,

Antiquity no pleasure gave,

The moderns of the ancients rave —

Books he abandoned like the fair,

His book-shelf instantly doth drape

With taffety instead of crape.

XXXIX

Having abjured the haunts of men,

Like him renouncing vanity,

His friendship I acquired just then;

His character attracted me.

An innate love of meditation,

Original imagination,

And cool sagacious mind he had:

I was incensed and he was sad.

Both were of passion satiate

And both of dull existence tired,

Extinct the flame which once had fired;

Both were expectant of the hate

With which blind Fortune oft betrays

The very morning of our days.

XL

He who hath lived and living, thinks,

Must e’en despise his kind at last;

He who hath suffered ofttimes shrinks

From shades of the relentless past.

No fond illusions live to soothe,

But memory like a serpent’s tooth

With late repentance gnaws and stings.

All this in many cases brings

A charm with it in conversation.

Onegin’s speeches I abhorred

At first, but soon became inured

To the sarcastic observation,

To witticisms and taunts half-vicious

And gloomy epigrams malicious.

XLI

How oft, when on a summer night

Transparent o’er the Neva beamed

The firmament in mellow light,

And when the watery mirror gleamed

No more with pale Diana’s rays[16 - The midsummer nights in the latitude of St.

We called to mind our youthful days —

The days of love and of romance!

Then would we muse as in a trance,

Impressionable for an hour,

And breathe the balmy breath of night;

And like the prisoner’s our delight

Who for the greenwood quits his tower,

As on the rapid wings of thought

The early days of life we sought.