'She's mine!' announced Eugene, commanding;
And all the monsters fled the room;
The maid alone was left there standing
With
Onegin stares at her intently,
Then draws her to a corner gently
And lays her on a makeshift bed,
And on her shoulder rests his head. . . .
Then Olga enters in confusion,
And Lensky too; a light shines out;
Onegin lifts an arm to rout
Unbidden guests for their intrusion;
He rants at them, his eyes turn dread;
Tatyana lies there nearly dead.
21
The heated words grow louder, quicken;
Onegin snatches up a knife,
And Lensky falls; the shadows thicken;
A rending cry amid the strife
Reverberates ... the cabin quivers;
Gone numb with terror, Tanya shivers . . .
And wakes to find her room alight,
The frozen windows sparkling bright,
Where dawn's vermilion rays are playing;
Then Olga pushes through the door,
More rosy than the dawn before
And lighter than a swallow, saying:
'Oh, tell me, do, Tatyana love,
Who was it you were dreaming of?'
22
But she ignores her sister's pleading,
Just lies in bed without a word,
Keeps leafing through some book she's reading,
So wrapt in thought she hasn't heard.
Although the book she read presented
No lines a poet had invented,
No sapient truths, no pretty scenes
Yet neither Virgil's, nor Racine's,
Nor Seneca's, nor Byron's pages,
Nor even
Had ever so engrossed a maid:
She read, my friends, that king of sages
Martyn Zadck,* Chaldean seer
And analyst of dreams unclear.
23
This noble and profound creation
A roving pedlar one day brought
To show them in their isolation,
And finally left it when they bought
