Like fair Lenore,* on moonlit nights
She rode with me those craggy heights!
How often on the shores of Tauris,*
On misty eves, she led me down
To hear the sea's incessant sound,
The Nereids'* eternal chorus
That endless chant the waves unfurled
In praise of him who made the world.
5
Forgetting, then, the city's splendour,
Its noisy feasts and grand events,
In sad Moldavia she turned tender
And visited the humble tents
Of wandering tribes; and like a child,
She learned their ways and soon grew wild:
The language of the gods she shed
For strange and simple tongues instead
To sing the savage steppe,* elated;
But then her course abruptly veered,
And in my garden* she appeared
A country missinfatuated,
With mournful air and brooding glance,
And in her hands a French romance.
6
And now I seize the first occasion
To show my Muse a grand soire;
I watch with jealous trepidation
Her rustic charms on full display.
And lo! my beauty calmly passes
Through ranks of men from highborn classes,
Past diplomats and soldier-fops,
And haughty dames . . . then calmly stops
To sit and watch the grand procession
The gowns, the talk, the milling mass,
The slow parade of guests who pass
Before the hostess in succession,
The sombre men who form a frame
Around each painted belle and dame.
7
She likes the stately disposition
Of oligarchic colloquies,
Their chilly pride in high position,
The mix of years and ranks she sees.
But who is that among the chosen,
That figure standing mute and frozen,
That stranger no one seems to know?
Before him faces come and go
Like spectres in a bleak procession.
What is itmartyred pride, or spleen
