Eugene Onegin. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

'Tis the warm time of labour, flowers;

The time for mystic strolls which late

Into the starry night extend.

Quick to the country let us wend

In vehicles surcharged with freight;

In coach or post-cart duly placed

Beyond the city-barriers haste.

[Note 67: Levshin—a contemporary writer on political economy.]

V

Thou also, reader generous,

The chaise long ordered please employ,

Abandon cities riotous,

Which in the winter were a joy:

The Muse capricious let us coax,

Go hear the rustling of the oaks

Beside a nameless rivulet,

Where in the country Eugene yet,

An idle anchorite and sad,

A while ago the winter spent,

Near young Tattiana resident,

My pretty self-deceiving maid—

No more the village knows his face,

For there he left a mournful trace.

VI

Let us proceed unto a rill,

Which in a hilly neighbourhood

Seeks, winding amid meadows still,

The river through the linden wood.

The nightingale there all night long,

Spring's paramour, pours forth her song

The fountain brawls, sweetbriers bloom,

And lo! where lies a marble tomb

And two old pines their branches spread—

'Vladimir Lenski lies beneath,

Who early died a gallant death,'

Thereon the passing traveller read:

'The date, his fleeting years how long—

Repose in peace, thou child of song.'

VII

Time was, the breath of early dawn

Would agitate a mystic wreath

Hung on a pine branch earthward drawn

Above the humble urn of death.

Time was, two maidens from their home

At eventide would hither come,

And, by the light the moonbeams gave,

Lament, embrace upon that grave.

But now—none heeds the monument

Of woe: effaced the pathway now:

There is no wreath upon the bough: