But then as torpor dulled sensation,
His feelings and his thoughts went slack,
While in his mind Imagination
Dealt out her motley faro pack.
He sees a youth, quite still, reposing
On melting snowas if he's dozing
On bivouac; then hears with dread
A voice proclaim: 'Well then, he's dead!'
He sees forgotten foes he'd bested,
Base cowards, slanderers full-blown,
Unfaithful women he had known,
Companions whom he now detested . . .
A country house ... a windowsill. . .
Where she sits waiting . . . waiting still!
38
He got so lost in his depression,
He just about went mad, I fear,
Or else turned poet (an obsession
That I'd have been the first to cheer!)
It's true: by self-hypnotic action,
My muddled pupil, in distraction,
Came close to grasping at that time
The principles of Russian rhyme.
He looked the poet so completely
When by the hearth he'd sit alone
And
Or sometimes
While on the flames he'd drop unseen
His slipper or his magazine!
39
The days flew by. The winter season
Dissolved amid the balmy air;
He didn't die, or lose his reason,
Or turn a poet in despair.
With spring he felt rejuvenated:
The cell in which he'd hibernated
So marmot-like through winter's night
The hearth, the double panes shut tight
He quit one sparkling morn and sprinted
Along the Neva's bank by sleigh.
On hacked-out bluish ice that lay
Beside the road the sunlight glinted.
The rutted snow had turned to slush;
But where in such a headlong rush
40
Has my Eugene directly hastened?
You've guessed already. Yes, indeed:
The moody fellow, still unchastened,
Has flown to Tanya's in his need.
He enters like a dead man, striding
