When she was small she didn't choose
To talk to them of clothes or fashion
Or tell them all the city news.
And she was not the sort who glories
In girlish pranks; but grisly stories
Quite charmed her heart when they were told
On winter nights all dark and cold.
Whenever nanny brought together
Young Olga's friends to spend the day,
Tatyana never joined their play
Or games of tag upon the heather;
For she was bored by all their noise,
Their laughing shouts and giddy joys.
28
Upon her balcony appearing,
She loved to greet Aurora's show,
When dancing stars are disappearing
Against the heavens' pallid glow,
When earth's horizon softly blushes,
And wind, the morning's herald, rushes,
And slowly day begins its flight.
In winter, when the shade of night
Still longer half the globe encumbers,
And 'neath the misty moon on high
An idle stillness rules the sky,
And late the lazy East still slumbers
Awakened early none the less,
By candlelight she'd rise and dress.
29
From early youth she read romances,
And novels set her heart aglow;
She loved the fictions and the fancies
Of Richardson and of Rousseau.
Her father was a kindly fellow
Lost in a past he found more mellow;
But still, in books he saw no harm,
And, though immune to reading's charm,
Deemed it a minor peccadillo;
Nor did he care what secret tome
His daughter read or kept at home
Asleep till morn beneath her pillow;
His wife herself, we ought to add,
For Richardson was simply mad.
30
It wasn't that she'd read him, really,
Nor was it that she much preferred
To Lovelace Grandison, but merely
That long ago she'd often heard
Her Moscow cousin, Princess Laura,
Go on about their special aura.
