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CHAPTER SEVEN

Moscow! Russia's favorite daughter! Where is your equal to be found?

Dmitriev

How not to love one's native Moscow?

Baratïnski

“Reviling Moscow! This is what comes from seeing the world! Where is it better, then?” “Where we are not.”

Griboedov

Chased by the vernal beams, down the surrounding hills the snows already have run in turbid streams ⁴ onto the inundated fields. With a serene smile, nature greets through her sleep the morning of the year. Bluing, the heavens shine. ⁸ The yet transparent woods as if with down are greening. The bee flies from her waxen cell after the tribute of the field. ¹² The dales grow dry and varicolored. The herds are noisy, and the nightingale has sung already in the hush of nights.

How sad your apparition is to me, spring, spring, season of love! What a dark stir there is ⁴ in my soul, in my blood! With what oppressive tenderness I revel in the whiff of spring fanning my face ⁸ in the lap of the rural stillness! Or is enjoyment strange to me, and all that gladdens, animates, all that exults and gleams, ¹² casts spleen and languishment upon a soul long dead and all looks dark to it?

III

Or gladdened not by the return of leaves that perished in the autumn, a bitter loss we recollect, ⁴ harking to the new murmur of the woods; or with reanimated nature we compare in troubled thought the withering of our years, ⁸ for which there is no renovation? Perhaps there comes into our thoughts, midst a poetical reverie, some other ancient spring, ¹² which sets our heart aquiver with the dream of a distant clime, a marvelous night, a moon....

Now is the time: good lazybones, epicurean sages; you, equanimous fortunates; ⁴ you, fledglings of the Lyóvshin⁴¹ school; you, country Priams; and sentimental ladies, you; spring calls you to the country, ⁸ season of warmth, of flowers, of labors, of inspired rambles, and of seductive nights. Friends! to the fields, quick, quick; ¹² in heavy loaden chariots; with your own horses or with posters; out of the towngates start to trek!

And you, indulgent reader, in your imported calash, leave the indefatigable city ⁴ where in the winter you caroused; let's go with my capricious Muse to hear the murmur of a park above a nameless river, in the country place, ⁸ where my Eugene, an idle and despondent recluse, but recently dwelt in the winter, in the neighborhood of youthful Tanya, ¹² of my dear dreamer; but where he is no longer now... where a sad trace he left.

'Mid hills disposed in a half circle, let us go thither where a rill, winding, by way of a green meadow, ⁴ runs to the river through a linden bosquet. The nightingale, spring's lover, sings there all night; the cinnamon rose blooms, and the babble of the fount is heard. ⁸ There a tombstone is seen in the shade of two ancient pines. The scripture to the stranger says: “Here lies Vladimir Lenski, ¹² who early died the death of the courageous, in such a year, at such an age. Repose, boy poet!”

VII

On the inclined bough of a pine, time was, the early breeze above that humble urn ⁴ swayed a mysterious wreath; time was, during late leisures, two girl companions hither used to come; and, by the moon, upon the grave, ⁸ embraced, they wept; but now... the drear memorial is forgot. The wonted trail to it, weed-choked. No wreath is on the bough. ¹² Alone, beneath it, gray and feeble, the herdsman as before keeps singing and plaiting his poor footgear.