Евгений Онегин / Eugene Onegin

XXVI

Contemplativeness, her delight,

E’en from her cradle’s earliest dream,

Adorned with many a vision bright

Of rural life the sluggish stream;

Ne’er touched her fingers indolent

The needle nor, o’er framework bent,

Would she the canvas tight enrich

With gay design and silken stitch.

Desire to rule ye may observe

When the obedient doll in sport

An infant maiden doth exhort

Polite demeanour to preserve,

Gravely repeating to another

Recent instructions of its mother.

XXVII

But Tania ne’er displayed a passion

For dolls, e’en from her earliest years,

And gossip of the town and fashion

She ne’er repeated unto hers.

Strange unto her each childish game,

But when the winter season came

And dark and drear the evenings were,

Terrible tales she loved to hear.

And when for Olga nurse arrayed

In the broad meadow a gay rout,

All the young people round about,

At prisoner’s base she never played.

Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed,

Their giddy sports she ne’er enjoyed.

XXVIII

She loved upon the balcony

To anticipate the break of day,

When on the pallid eastern sky

The starry beacons fade away,

The horizon luminous doth grow,

Morning’s forerunners, breezes blow

And gradually day unfolds.

In winter, when Night longer holds

A hemisphere beneath her sway,

Longer the East inert reclines

Beneath the moon which dimly shines,

And calmly sleeps the hours away,

At the same hour she oped her eyes

And would by candlelight arise.

XXIX

Romances pleased her from the first,

Her all in all did constitute;

In love adventures she was versed,

Rousseau and Richardson to boot.

Not a bad fellow was her father

Though superannuated rather;

In books he saw nought to condemn

But, as he never opened them,

Viewed them with not a little scorn,

And gave himself but little pain

His daughter’s book to ascertain

Which ’neath her pillow lay till morn.

His wife was also mad upon

The works of Mr. Richardson.