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

Greatly daring,

The huckster now takes heart, unbarring

His cellar, late the prey and sack

Of Neva, – hoping to get back

His heavy loss and wasted labor

Out of the pockets of his neighbor.

The drifted boats from each courtyard

Are carried.

To a certain bard,

A count, a favorite of heaven

To one Khvostov, the theme was given

To chant in his immortal song

How Neva’s shores had suffered wrong.

But my Evgeny, poor, sick fellow! —

Alas, the tumult in his brain

Had left him powerless to sustain

Those shocks of terror.

Of riotous winds and Neva near

Resounded always in his ear;

A host of hideous thoughts attacked him,

A kind of nightmare rent and racked him,

And on he wandered silently;

And as the week, the month, went by,

Never came home. His habitation,

As time ran out, the landlord took,

And leased the now deserted nook

For a poor poet’s occupation.

Nor ever came Evgeny home

For his belongings; he would roam,

A stranger to the world; his ration

A morsel tendered in compassion

Out of a window; he would tramp

All day, and on the quay would camp

To sleep; his garments, old and fraying,

Were all in tatters and decaying.

And the malicious boys would pelt

The man with stones; and of the felt

The cabman’s whiplash on him flicking;

For he had lost the skill of picking

His footsteps, – deafened, it may be,

By fears that clamored inwardly.

So, dragging out his days, ill-fated,

He seemed like something mistreated,

No beast, nor yet of human birth,

Neither a denizen of earth

Nor phantom of the dead.

Belated

One night, on Neva wharf he slept.

Now summer days toward autumn crept;

A wet and stormy wind was blowing,

And Neva’s sullen waters flowing

Plashed on the wharf and muttered there

Complaining – beat the slippery stair

As suitors beat in supplication

Unheeded at a judge’s door.

In gloom and rain, amid the roar

Of winds, – a sound of desolation

With cries of watchmen interchanged

Afar, who through the darkness ranged, —

Our poor Evgeny woke; and dounted,

By well-remembered terrors haunted,

He started sharply, rose in haste,

And forth upon his wanderings paced;

– And halted on a sudden, staring

About him silently, and wearing

A look of wild alarm and awe.