Евгений Онегин / Eugene Onegin

In former years thus did not I

In idleness and tranquil joy

The happiest days of life employ?

L

Love, flowers, the country, idleness

And fields my joys have ever been;

I like the difference to express

Between myself and my Eugene,

Lest the malicious reader or

Some one or other editor

Of keen sarcastic intellect

Herein my portrait should detect,

And impiously should declare,

To sketch myself that I have tried

Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride,

As if impossible it were

To write of any other elf

Than one’s own fascinating self.

LI

Here I remark all poets are

Love to idealize inclined;

I have dreamed many a vision fair

And the recesses of my mind

Retained the image, though short-lived,

Which afterwards the muse revived.

Thus carelessly I once portrayed

Mine own ideal, the mountain maid,

The captives of the Salguir’s shore[20 - Refers to two of the most interesting productions of the poet.

But now a question in this wise

Oft upon friendly lips doth rise:

Whom doth thy plaintive Muse adore?

To whom amongst the jealous throng

Of maids dost thou inscribe thy song?

LII

Whose glance reflecting inspiration

With tenderness hath recognized

Thy meditative incantation —

Whom hath thy strain immortalized?

None, be my witness Heaven above!

The malady of hopeless love

I have endured without respite.

Happy who thereto can unite

Poetic transport. They impart

A double force unto their song

Who following Petrarch move along

And ease the tortures of the heart —

Perchance they laurels also cull —

But I, in love, was mute and dull.

LIII

The Muse appeared, when love passed by

And my dark soul to light was brought;

Free, I renewed the idolatry

Of harmony enshrining thought.

I write, and anguish flies away,

Nor doth my absent pen portray

Around my stanzas incomplete

Young ladies’ faces and their feet.

Extinguished ashes do not blaze —

I mourn, but tears I cannot shed —

Soon, of the tempest which hath fled

Time will the ravages efface —

When that time comes, a poem I’ll strive

To write in cantos twenty-five.