Eugene Oneguine [Onegin]. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse
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,[18]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.<p><strong>XLII</strong></p>Absorbed in melancholy mood And o'er the granite coping bent, Oneguine meditative stood, E'en as the poet says he leant.[19]'Tis silent all! Alone the cries Of the night sentinels arise And from the Millionaya afar[20]The sudden rattling of a car.Lo! on the sleeping river borne, A boat with splashing oar floats by, And now we hear delightedly A jolly song and distant horn; But sweeter in a midnight dream Torquato Tasso's strains I deem.<p><strong>XLIII</strong></p>Ye billows of blue Hadria's sea, O Brenta, once more we shall meet And, inspiration firing me, Your magic voices I shall greet, Whose tones Apollo's sons inspire, And after Albion's proud lyre [21]Possess my love and sympathy.The nights of golden Italy I'll pass beneath the firmament, Hid in the gondola's dark shade, Alone with my Venetian maid, Now talkative, now reticent; From her my lips shall learn the tongue Of love which whilom Petrarch sung.<p><strong>XLIV</strong></p>When will my hour of freedom come!Time, I invoke thee! favouring galesAwaiting on the shore I roamAnd beckon to the passing sails.Upon the highway of the seaWhen shall I wing my passage freeOn waves by tempests curdled o'er!'Tis time to quit this weary shoreSo uncongenial to my mind,To dream upon the sunny strandOf Africa, ancestral land,[22]Of dreary Russia left behind,Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,Wherein I buried left my heart. <p><strong>XLV</strong></p>Eugene designed with me to start And visit many a foreign clime, But Fortune cast our lots apart For a protracted space of time.Just at that time his father died, And soon Oneguine's door beside Of creditors a hungry rout Their claims and explanations shout.But Eugene, hating litigation And with his lot in life content, To a surrender gave consent, Seeing in this no deprivation, Or counting on his uncle's death And what the old man might bequeath.<p><strong>XLVI</strong></p>
