“Then — is it not so? — in the wilderness,
far from vain Hearsay,
I was not to your liking.... Why, then, now4 do you pursue me?
Why have you marked me out?
Might it not be because I must
now move in the grand monde;
8 because I have both wealth and rank;
because my husband has been maimed in battles;
because for that the Court is kind to us?
Might it not be because my disrepute
12 would be remarked by everybody now
and in society might bring you
scandalous honor?
XLV
“I'm crying.... If your Tanya
you've not forgotten yet,
then know: the sharpness of your blame,
4 cold, stern discourse,
if it were only in my power
I'd have preferred to an offensive passion,
and to these letters and tears.
8 For my infantine dreams
you had at least some pity then,
at least consideration for my age.
But now!... What to my feet
12 has brought you? What a trifle!
How, with your heart and mind,
be the slave of a trivial feeling?
XLVI
“But as to me, Onegin, this magnificence,
a wearisome life's tinsel, my successes
in the world's vortex,
4 my fashionable house and evenings,
what do I care for them?... At once I'd gladly
give all the frippery of this masquerade,
all this glitter, and noise, and fumes,
8 for a shelfful of books, for a wild garden,
for our poor dwelling,
for those haunts where for the first time,
Onegin, I saw you,
12 and for the humble churchyard where
there is a cross now and the shade
of branches over my poor nurse.
XLVII
“Yet happiness had been so possible,
so near!... But my fate is already
settled. Imprudently,
4 perhaps, I acted.
My mother with tears of conjurement
beseeched me. For poor Tanya
all lots were equal.
8 I married. You must,
I pray you, leave me;
I know: in your heart are
both pride and genuine honor.
12 I love you (why dissimulate?);
but to another I belong:
to him I shall be faithful all my life.”
XLVIII
She has gone. Eugene stands
as if by thunder struck.
In what a tempest of sensations
4 his heart is now immersed!
But there resounds a sudden clink of spurs,
and there appears Tatiana's husband,
and here my hero,
8 at an unfortunate minute for him,
reader, we now shall leave
for long... forever.... After him
sufficiently along one path
12 we've roamed the world. Let us congratulate
each other on attaining land. Hurrah!
It long (is it not true?) was time.
XLIX
Whoever, O my reader,
you be — friend, foe — I wish to part
with you at present as a pal.
4 Farewell. Whatever in these careless strophes
you might have looked for as you followed me —
tumultuous recollections,
relief from labors,
8 live images or witticisms,
or faults of grammar —
God grant that in this book, for recreation,
for dreaming, for the heart,
12 for jousts in journals,
you find at least a crumb.
Upon which, let us part, farewell!
L
You, too, farewell, my strange traveling companion,
and you, my true ideal,
and you, my live and constant,
4 though small, work. I have known with you
all that a poet covets:
obliviousness of life in the world's tempests,
the sweet discourse of friends.
8 Rushed by have many, many days
since young Tatiana, and with her
Onegin, in a blurry dream
appeared to me for the first time —
12 and the far stretch of a free novel
I through a magic crystal
still did not make out clearly.