No More Learning

[Note 28: A play upon the word "venetz," crown, which also
signifies a nimbus or glory, and is the symbol of marriage
from the fact of two gilt crowns being held over the heads
of the bride and bridegroom during the ceremony. The literal
meaning of the passage is therefore: his earthly marriage
was dissolved and a heavenly one was contracted. ]

XXXVII

To his Penates now returned,
Vladimir Lenski visited
His neighbour's lowly tomb and mourned
Above the ashes of the dead.
There long time sad at heart he stayed:
"Poor Yorick," mournfully he said,
"How often in thine arms I lay;
How with thy medal I would play,
The Medal Otchakoff conferred! (29)
To me he would his Olga give,
Would whisper: shall I so long live? "--
And by a genuine sorrow stirred,
Lenski his pencil-case took out
And an elegiac poem wrote.

[Note 29: The fortress of Otchakoff was taken by storm on the
18th December 1788 by a Russian army under Prince Potemkin.
Thirty thousand Turks are said to have perished during the
assault and ensuing massacre. ]

XXXVIII

Likewise an epitaph with tears
He writes upon his parents' tomb,
And thus ancestral dust reveres.
Oh! on the fields of life how bloom
Harvests of souls unceasingly
By Providence's dark decree!
They blossom, ripen and they fall
And others rise ephemeral!
Thus our light race grows up and lives,
A moment effervescing stirs,
Then seeks ancestral sepulchres,
The appointed hour arrives, arrives!
And our successors soon shall drive
Us from the world wherein we live.

XXXIX

Meantime, drink deeply of the flow
Of frivolous existence, friends;
Its insignificance I know
And care but little for its ends.
To dreams I long have closed mine eyes,
Yet sometimes banished hopes will rise
And agitate my heart again;
And thus it is 'twould cause me pain
Without the faintest trace to leave
This world. I do not praise desire,
Yet still apparently aspire
My mournful fate in verse to weave,
That like a friendly voice its tone
Rescue me from oblivion.

XL

Perchance some heart 'twill agitate,
And then the stanzas of my theme
Will not, preserved by kindly Fate,
Perish absorbed by Lethe's stream.
Then it may be, O flattering tale,
Some future ignoramus shall
My famous portrait indicate
And cry: he was a poet great!
My gratitude do not disdain,
Admirer of the peaceful Muse,
Whose memory doth not refuse
My light productions to retain,
Whose hands indulgently caress
The bays of age and helplessness.


End of Canto the Second.


CANTO THE THIRD

The Country Damsel

'Elle etait fille, elle etait amoureuse'--Malfilatre

Canto The Third

[Note: Odessa and Mikhailovskoe, 1824. ]

I

"Whither away? Deuce take the bard! "--
"Good-bye, Oneguine, I must go. "--
"I won't detain you; but 'tis hard
To guess how you the eve pull through. "--
"At Larina's. "--"Hem, that is queer!
Pray is it not a tough affair
Thus to assassinate the eve? "--
"Not at all. "--"That I can't conceive!