The bronze Horseman / Медный всадник. Книга для чтения на английском языке

] hurrying, through the byways!

From city’s end to end they sped

Through storm and peril, bent on saving

The people, now in panic raving

And drowning in their houses there.

New-built, high up in Peter’s Square

A corner mansion then ascended;

And where its lofty perron ended

Two sentry lions stood at guard

Like living things, and kept their ward

With paw uplifted. Here, bare-headed,

Pale, rigid, arms across his breast,

Upon the creature’s marble crest

Sat poor Evgeny.

Nought for himself; he did not hear

The hungry rollers rising near

And on his very footsoles plashing,

Feel on his face the rainstorm lashing,

Or how the riotous, moaning blast

Had snatched his hat. His eyes were fast

Fixt on one spot in desperation

Where from the deeps in agitation

The wicked waves like mountains rose,

Where the storm howled, and round were driven

Fragments of wreck… There,

God in Heaven!

Hard by the bay should stand,

and close,

Alas, too close to the wild water,

A painless fence, a willow-tree,

And there a frail old house should be

Where dwelt a widow, with a daughter

Parasha – and his dream was she!

His dream – or was it but a vision,

All that he saw? Was life also

An idle dream which in derision

Fate sends to mock us here below?

And he, as though a man enchanted

And on the marble pinned and planted

Cannot descend, and round him lie

Only the waters.

With Neva still beneath him churning,

Unshaken, on Evgeny turning

His back, and with an arm flung wide,

Behold the Image sit, and ride

Upon his brazen horse astride!

II

But now, with rack and ruin sated

And weary of her insolence

And uproar, Neva, still elated

With her rebellious turbulence,

Stole back, and left her booty stranded

And unregarded. So a bandit

Bursts with his horde upon a village

To smash an slay, destroy and pillage;

Whence yells, and violence, and alarms,

Gritting of teeth, and grievous harms

And wailing’s; then the evildoers

Rush home; but dreading the pursuers

And sagging with the stolen load

They drop their plunder on the road.

Meanwhile the water had abated

And pavements now uncovered lay;

And our Evgeny, by dismay

And hope and longing agitated,

Sore-hearted to the river sped.