Likewise an epitaph with tears He writes upon his parents’ tomb, And thus ancestral dust reveres. Oh! on the fields of life how bloom Harvests of souls unceasingly By Providence’s dark decree! They blossom, ripen and they fall And others rise ephemeral! Thus our light race grows up and lives, A moment effervescing stirs, Then seeks ancestral sepulchres, The appointed hour arrives, arrives! And our successors soon shall drive Us from the world wherein we live. XXXIX Meantime, drink deeply of the flow Of frivolous existence, friends; Its insignificance I know And care but little for its ends. To dreams I long have closed mine eyes, Yet sometimes banished hopes will rise And agitate my heart again; And thus it is ’twould cause me pain Without the faintest trace to leave This world. I do not praise desire, Yet still apparently aspire My mournful fate in verse to weave, That like a friendly voice its tone Rescue me from oblivion. XL Perchance some heart ’twill agitate, And then the stanzas of my theme Will not, preserved by kindly Fate, Perish absorbed by Lethe’s stream. Then it may be, O flattering tale, Some future ignoramus shall My famous portrait indicate And cry: he was a poet great! My gratitude do not disdain, Admirer of the peaceful Muse, Whose memory doth not refuse My light productions to retain, Whose hands indulgently caress The bays of age and helplessness. End of Canto the Second. CANTO THE THIRD The Country Damsel ‘Elle était fille, elle était amoureuse’—Malfilatre Canto The Third [Note: Odessa and Mikhailovskoe, 1824.] I “Whither away? Deuce take the bard!”— “Good-bye, Onéguine, I must go.”— “I won’t detain you; but ’tis hard To guess how you the eve pull through.”— “At Làrina’s.”—“Hem, that is queer! Pray is it not a tough affair Thus to assassinate the eve?”— “Not at all.”—“That I can’t conceive! ’Tis something of this sort I deem. In the first place, say, am I right? A Russian household simple quite, Who welcome guests with zeal extreme, Preserves and an eternal prattle About the rain and flax and cattle.”— II “No misery I see in that”— “Boredom, my friend, behold the ill—” “Your fashionable world I hate, Domestic life attracts me still, Where—”—“What! another eclogue spin? For God’s sake, Lenski, don’t begin! What! really going? ’Tis too bad! But Lenski, I should be so glad Would you to me this Phyllis show, Fair source of every fine idea, Verses and tears et cetera. Present me.”—“You are joking.”—“No.”— “Delighted.”—“When?”—“This very night. They will receive us with delight.” III