No More Learning

No fond illusions live to soothe,
But memory like a serpent's tooth
With late repentance gnaws and stings.
All this in many cases brings
A charm with it in conversation.
Oneguine's speeches I abhorred
At first, but soon became inured
To the sarcastic observation,
To witticisms and taunts half-vicious
And gloomy epigrams malicious.

XLI

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,(17)
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.

[Note 17: The midsummer nights in the latitude of St. Petersburg
are a prolonged twilight. ]

XLII

Absorbed in melancholy mood
And o'er the granite coping bent,
Oneguine meditative stood,
E'en as the poet says he leant. (18)
'Tis silent all! Alone the cries
Of the night sentinels arise
And from the Millionaya afar(19)
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.

[Note 18: Refers to Mouravieff's "Goddess of the Neva. " At St.
Petersburg the banks of the Neva are lined throughout with
splendid granite quays.
]

[Note 19:
A street running parallel to the Neva, and leading from
the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace and Garden. ]

XLIII

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 (20)
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.

[Note 20: The strong influence exercised by Byron's genius on the
imagination of Pushkin is well known. Shakespeare and other
English dramatists had also their share in influencing his mind,
which, at all events in its earlier developments, was of an
essentially imitative type. As an example of his Shakespearian
tastes, see his poem of "Angelo," founded upon "Measure for Measure. "]

XLIV

When will my hour of freedom come!
Time, I invoke thee! favouring gales
Awaiting on the shore I roam
And beckon to the passing sails.
Upon the highway of the sea
When shall I wing my passage free
On waves by tempests curdled o'er!
'Tis time to quit this weary shore
So uncongenial to my mind,
To dream upon the sunny strand
Of Africa, ancestral land,(21)
Of dreary Russia left behind,
Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,
Wherein I buried left my heart.

[Note 21: The poet was, on his mother's side, of African extraction,
a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of
his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal,
was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a
corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian
Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused
him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's
brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg
for the purpose of ransoming him; but Peter would not surrender his
godson who died at the age of ninety-two, having attained the rank
of general in the Russian service.