My friends, the poet ye regret! When hope’s delightful flower but bloomed In bud of promise incomplete, The manly toga scarce assumed, He perished. Where his troubled dreams, And where the admirable streams Of youthful impulse, reverie, Tender and elevated, free? And where tempestuous love’s desires, The thirst of knowledge and of fame, Horror of sinfulness and shame, Imagination’s sacred fires, Ye shadows of a life more high, Ye dreams of heavenly poesy? XXXV Perchance to benefit mankind, Or but for fame he saw the light; His lyre, to silence now consigned, Resounding through all ages might Have echoed to eternity. With worldly honours, it may be, Fortune the poet had repaid. It may be that his martyred shade Carried a truth divine away; That, for the century designed, Had perished a creative mind, And past the threshold of decay, He ne’er shall hear Time’s eulogy, The blessings of humanity. XXXVI Or, it may be, the bard had passed A life in common with the rest; Vanished his youthful years at last, The fire extinguished in his breast, In many things had changed his life— The Muse abandoned, ta’en a wife, Inhabited the country, clad In dressing-gown, a cuckold glad: A life of fact, not fiction, led— At forty suffered from the gout, Eaten, drunk, gossiped and grown stout: And finally, upon his bed Had finished life amid his sons, Doctors and women, sobs and groans. XXXVII But, howsoe’er his lot were cast, Alas! the youthful lover slain, Poetical enthusiast, A friendly hand thy life hath ta’en! There is a spot the village near Where dwelt the Muses’ worshipper, Two pines have joined their tangled roots, A rivulet beneath them shoots Its waters to the neighbouring vale. There the tired ploughman loves to lie, The reaping girls approach and ply Within its wave the sounding pail, And by that shady rivulet A simple tombstone hath been set. XXXVIII There, when the rains of spring we mark Upon the meadows showering, The shepherd plaits his shoe of bark,(66) Of Volga fishermen doth sing, And the young damsel from the town, For summer to the country flown, Whene’er across the plain at speed Alone she gallops on her steed, Stops at the tomb in passing by; The tightened leathern rein she draws, Aside she casts her veil of gauze And reads with rapid eager eye The simple epitaph—a tear Doth in her gentle eye appear. [Note 66: In Russia and other northern countries rude shoes are made of the inner bark of the lime tree.] XXXIX