All other days they've our permission
To quite forget us, if they please
So grant them, God, long life and ease!
21
Of course the love of tender beauties
Is surer far than friends or kin:
Your claim upon its joyous duties
Survives when even tempests spin.
Of course it's so. And yet be wary,
For fashions change, and views will vary,
And nature's made of wayward stuff
The charming sex is light as fluff.
What's more, the husband's frank opinion
Is bound by any righteous wife
To be respected in this life;
And so your mistress (faithful minion)
May in a trice be swept away:
For Satan treats all love as play.
22
But whom to love? To trust and treasure?
Who won't betray us in the end?
And who'll be kind enough to measure
Our words and deeds as we intend?
Who won't sow slander all about us?
Who'll coddle us and never doubt us?
To whom will all our faults be few?
Who'll never bore us through and through?
You futile, searching phantom-breeder,
Why spend your efforts all in vain;
Just love yourself and ease the pain,
My most esteemed and honoured reader!
A worthy object! Never mind,
A truer love you'll never find.
23
But what ensued from Tanya's meeting?
Alas, it isn't hard to guess!
Within her heart the frenzied beating
Coursed on and never ceased to press
Her gentle soul, athirst with aching;
Nay, ever more intensely quaking,
Poor Tanya burns in joyless throes;
Sleep shuns her bed, all sweetness goes,
The glow of life has vanished starkly;
Her health, her calm, the smile she wore
Like empty sounds exist no more,
And Tanya's youth now glimmers darkly:
Thus stormy shadows cloak with grey
The scarcely risen, newborn day.
24
