As dark forebodings filled her mind
Of some misfortune ill defined.
7
Yet even in these same afflictions
She found a secret charm in part:
For naturefond of contradictions
Has so designed the human heart.
The holy days are here. What gladness! .. .
Bright youth divines, not knowing sadness,
With nothing that it must regret,
With all of life before it yet
A distance luminous and boundless. . . .
Old age divines with glasses on
And sees the grave before it yawn,
All thoughts of time returninggroundless;
No matter: childish hope appears
To murmur lies in aged ears.
8
Tatyana watches, fascinated,
The molten wax submerge and turn
To wondrous shapes which designated
Some wondrous thing that she would learn.
Then from a basin filled with water
Their rings are drawn in random order;
When Tanya's ring turned up at last,
The song they sang was from the past:
Foretells a death to come ere long,
And girls prefer 'The Kitty's Song.'*
9
A frosty night, the sky resplendent
As heaven's galaxy shines down
And glidesso peaceful and transcendent. . . .
Tatyana, in her low-cut gown,
Steps out of doors and trains a mirror
Upon the moon to bring it nearer;*
But all that shows in her dark glass
Is just the trembling moon, alas. . . .
What's that... the crunching snow . . . who's coming?!
She flits on tiptoe with a sigh
And asks the stranger passing by,
Her voice more soft than reed pipe's humming:
'Oh, what's your name?' He hurries on,
Looks back and answers: 'Agafon.'*
10
Tatyana, as her nurse suggested,
Prepared to conjure all night through,*
