A serving boy took cream around.
Tatyana by the window lingers
And breathes upon the chilly glass;
All lost in thought, the gentle lass
Begins to trace with lovely fingers
Across the misted panes a row
Of hallowed letters:
38
And all the while her soul was aching,
Her brimming eyes could hardly see.
Then sudden hoofbeats! . . . Now she's quaking. . . .
They're closer . . . coming here . . . it's he!
Onegin! 'Oh!'And light as air,
She's out the backway, down the stair
From porch to yard, to garden straight;
She runs, she flies; she dare not wait
To glance behind her; on she pushes
Past garden plots, small bridges, lawn,
The lakeway path, the wood; and on
She flies and breaks through lilac bushes,
Past seedbeds to the brookso fast
That, panting, on a bench at last
39
She falls ....
'He's here! But all those faces!
#62038; God, what must he think of me!
' But still her anguished heart embraces
A misty dream of what might be.
She trembles, burns, and waits ... so near him!
But will he come? .. . She doesn't hear him.
Some serf girls in the orchard there,
While picking berries, filled the air
With choral songas they'd been bidden
(An edict that was meant, you see,
To keep sly mouths from feeling free
To eat the master's fruit when hidden,
By filling them with song instead
For rural cunning isn't dead!):
The Girls' Song
