O how I envied then the waves
Those rushing tides in tumult tumbling
To fall about her feet like slaves!
I longed to join the waves in pressing
Upon those feet these lips . . . caressing.
No, never midst the fiercest blaze
Of wildest youth's most fervent days
Was I so racked with yearning's anguish:
No maiden's lips were equal bliss,
No rosy cheek that I might kiss,
Or sultry breast on which to languish.
No, never once did passion's flood
So rend my soul, so flame my blood.
34
Another memory finds me ready:
In cherished dreams I sometimes stand
And hold the lucky stirrup steady,
Then feel her foot within my hand!
Once more imagination surges,
Once more that touch ignites and urges
The blood within this withered heart:
Once more the love . . . once more the dart!
But stop .. . Enough! My babbling lyre
Has overpraised these haughty things:
They're hardly worth the songs one sings
Or all the passions they inspire;
Their charming words and glances sweet
Are quite as faithless as their feet.
35
But what of my Eugene?
Half drowsing,
He drives to bed from last night's ball,
While Petersburg, already rousing,
Answers the drumbeat's duty call.
The merchant's up, the pedlar scurries,
With jug in hand the milkmaid hurries,
Crackling the freshly fallen snow;
The cabby plods to hackney row.
In pleasant hubbub morn's awaking!
The shutters open, smoke ascends
In pale blue shafts from chimney ends.
The German baker's up and baking,
And more than once, in cotton cap,
Has opened up his window-trap.
36
But wearied by the ballroom's clamour,
He sleeps in blissful, sheer delight
This child of comfort and of glamour,
Who turns each morning into night.
By afternoon he'll finally waken,
The day ahead all planned and taken:
The endless round, the varied game;
Tomorrow too will be the same.
But was he happy in the flower
The very springtime of his days,
Amid his pleasures and their blaze,
Amid his conquests of the hour?
Or was he profligate and hale
Amid his feasts to no avail?
37
Yes, soon he lost all warmth of feeling:
The social buzz became a bore,
And all those beauties, once appealing,
Were objects of his thought no more.
Inconstancy grew too fatiguing;
And friends and friendship less intriguing;
For after all he couldn't drain
An endless bottle of champagne
To help those pies and beefsteaks settle,
Or go on dropping words of wit
With throbbing head about to split:
And so, for all his fiery mettle,
He did at last give up his love
Of pistol, sword, and ready glove.
38
We still, alas, cannot forestall it
This dreadful ailment's heavy toll;
The spleen is what the English call it,
We call it simply Russian soul.
'Twas this our hero had contracted;
And though, thank God, he never acted
To put a bullet through his head,
His former love of life was dead.
Like Byron's Harold, lost in trances,
Through drawing rooms he'd pass and stare;
But neither whist, nor gossip there,
Nor wanton sighs, nor tender glances
No, nothing touched his sombre heart,
He noticed nothing, took no part.
(39-41) 42
Capricious belles of lofty station!
You were the first that he forswore;
For nowadays in our great nation,
The manner grand can only bore.
I wouldn't say that ladies never
Discuss a Say or Bentham*ever;
But generally, you'll have to grant,
Their talk's absurd, if harmless, cant.
On top of which, they're so unerring,
So dignified, so awfully smart,
So pious and so chaste of heart,
So circumspect, so strict in bearing,
So inaccessibly serene,
Mere sight of them brings on the spleen.*
43
You too, young mistresses of leisure,
Who late at night are whisked away
In racing droshkies bound for pleasure
Along the Petersburg chausse
He dropped you too in sudden fashion.
Apostate from the storms of passion,
He locked himself within his den
And, with a yawn, took up his pen
And tried to write. But art's exaction
Of steady labour made him ill,
And nothing issued from his quill;
So thus he failed to join the faction
Of writerswhom I won't condemn
Since, after all, I'm one of them.
44
Once more an idler, now he smothers
The emptiness that plagues his soul
By making his the thoughts of others
A laudable and worthy goal.
He crammed his bookshelf overflowing,
Then read and readfrustration growing:
Some raved or lied, and some were dense;
Some lacked all conscience; some, all sense;
Each with a different dogma girded;
The old was dated through and through,
While nothing new was in the new;