XVII
But passions occupied more often the minds of my two anchorets. Having escaped from their tumultuous power, 4 Onegin spoke of them with an involuntary sigh of regret. Happy who knew their agitations and finally detached himself from them; 8 still happier who did not know them, who cooled love with separation, enmity with obloquy; sometimes with friends and wife yawned, undisturbed i2 by jealous torment, and the safe capital of forefathers did not entrust to a perfidious deuce!
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Eugene Onegin
XVIII
When we have flocked under the banner of sage tranquillity, when the flame of the passions has gone out 4 and laughable become to us their waywardness or surgings and belated echoes; reduced to sense not without trouble, 8 sometimes we like to listen to the tumultuous language of the passions of others, and it stirs our heart; exactly thus an old disabled soldier 12 does willingly bend an assiduous ear to the yarns of young mustached braves, [while he remains] forgotten in his shack.
XIX
Now flaming youthhood, on the other hand, cannot hide anything: enmity, love, sadness, and joy 4 'tis ready to blab out. Deemed invalided as to love, with a grave air Onegin listened as, loving the confession of the heart, 8 the poet his whole self expressed. His trustful conscience naively he laid bare.
Eugene learned without trouble i ? the youthful story of his lovea tale abounding in emotions long since not new to us. i}8
Chapter Two
XX
Ah, he loved as one loves no longer in our years; as only the mad soul of a poet 4 is still condemned to love: always, and everywhere, one reverie, one customary wish, one customary woe! 8 Neither the cooling distance, nor the long years of separation, nor hours given to the Muses, nor foreign beauties, 12 nor noise of merriments, nor studies, had changed in him a soul warmed by a virgin fire.
XXI
When scarce a boy, by Olga captivated, not having known yet torments of the heart, he'd been a tender witness 4 of her infantine frolics. He, in the shade of a protective park, had shared her frolics, and for these children wedding crowns 8 their fathers, who were friends and neighbors, desIn the backwoods, beneath a humble roof, [tined. full of innocent charm, she under the eyes of her parents 12 bloomed like a hidden lily of the valley which is unknown in the dense grass to butterflies or to the bee.
Eugene Onegin
XXII
She gave the poet the first dream of youthful transports, and the thought of her animated 4 his pipe's first moan. Farewell, golden games! He began to like thick groves, seclusion, stillness, and the night, 8 and the stars, and the moonthe moon, celestial lamp, to which we dedicated walks midst the evening darkness, 12 and tears, of secret pangs the solace But now we only see in her a substitute for bleary lanterns.
XXIII
Always modest, always obedient, always as merry as the morn, as naive as a poet's life, 4 as winsome as love's kiss5 her eyes, as azure as the sky, smile, flaxen locks, movements, voice, light waist-everything 8 in Olga but take any novel, and you will surely find her portraitj it is very sweet;
I liked it once myself, 12 but it has come to bore me beyond measure. Let me, my reader, take up the elder sister.
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Chapter Two
XXIV
Her sister was called Tatiana.13
For the first time a novel's tender pages 4 with such a name we willfully shall grace. What of it? It is pleasing, sonorous, but from it, I know, is inseparable the memory of ancientry 8 or housemaids' quarters. We must all admit that we have very little taste even in our names
(to say nothing of verses); 12 enlightenment does not suit us, and what we have derived from it is affectation-nothing more.
XXV
So she was called Tatiana. Neither with her sister's beauty nor with her [sister's] rosy freshness 4 would she attract one's eyes. Sauvage, sad, silent, as timid as the sylvan doe, in her own family 8 she seemed a strangeling. She knew not how to snuggle up to her father or mother; a child herself, among a crowd of children, 12 she never wished to play and skip, and often all day long, alone, she sat in silence by the window.
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Eugene Onegin
XXVI
Pensiveness, her companion, even from cradle days, adorned for her with dreams 4 the course of rural leisure. Her delicate fingers knew needles not; over the tambour bendin with a silk pattern she 8 did not enliven linen. Sign of the urge to domineer: the child with her obedient doll prepares in play i 2 for etiquette, law of the monde, and gravely to her doll repeats the lessons of her mamma5
XXVII
but even in those years Tatiana did not take in her hands a doll; about town news, about the fashions, 4 did not converse with it; and childish pranks to her were foreign; grisly tales in winter, in the dark of nights, 8 charmed more her heart. Whenever nurse assembled for Olga, on the spacious lawn, all her small girl companions, 12, she did not play at barleybreaks, dull were to her both ringing laughter and noise of their giddy diversions. I/j.2
Chapter Two
XXVIII
She on the balcony liked to prevene Aurora's rise, when, in the pale sky, disappears 4 the choral dance of stars, and earth's rim softly lightens, and, morning's herald, the wind whiffs, and rises by degrees the day. 8 In winter, when night's shade possesses longer half the world, and longer in the idle stillness, by the bemisted moon, 12, the lazy orient sleeps, awakened at her customary hour she would get up by candles.
XXIX
She early had been fond of novels; for her they replaced all; she grew enamored with the fictions 4 of Richardson and of Rousseau. Her father was a kindly fellow who lagged in the precedent age but saw no harm in books; 8 he, never reading, deemed them an empty toy, nor did he care what secret tome his daughter had 12 dozing till morn under her pillow. As to his wife, she was herself mad upon Richardson.
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Eugene Onegin
XXX
The reason she loved Richardson was not that she had read him, and not that Grandison 4 to Lovelace she preferred;14 but anciently, Princess Alina, her Moscow maiden cousin, would often talk to her about them. 8 Her husband at that time still was her fiance, but against her will. She sighed after another whose heart and mind 12 were much more to her liking; that Grandison was a great dandy, a gamester, and an Ensign in the Guards.
XXXI
Like him, she always dressed in the fashion and becomingly $ but without asking her advice 4 they took the maiden to the altar5 and to dispel her grief the sensible husband repaired soon to his countryseat, where she, 8 God knows by whom surrounded, tossed and wept at first, almost divorced her husband, then got occupied with household matters, grew 12 habituated, and became content. Habit to us is given from above: it is a substitute for happiness.15