Amid sly, pusillanimous Spoiled children most degenerate And tiresome rogues ridiculous And stupid censors passionate; Amid coquettes who pray to God And abject slaves who kiss the rod; In haunts of fashion where each day All with urbanity betray, Where harsh frivolity proclaims Its cold unfeeling sentences; Amid the awful emptiness Of conversation, thought and aims— In that morass where you and I Wallow, my friends, in company! END OF CANTO THE SIXTH CANTO THE SEVENTH Moscow Moscow, Russia’s darling daughter, Where thine equal shall we find? Dmitrieff Who can help loving mother Moscow? Baratynski (_Feasts_) A journey to Moscow! To see the world! Where better? Where man is not. Griboyédoff (_Woe from Wit_) Canto The Seventh [Written 1827-1828 at Moscow, Mikhailovskoe, St. Petersburg and Malinniki.] I Impelled by Spring’s dissolving beams, The snows from off the hills around Descended swift in turbid streams And flooded all the level ground. A smile from slumbering nature clear Did seem to greet the youthful year; The heavens shone in deeper blue, The woods, still naked to the view, Seemed in a haze of green embowered. The bee forth from his cell of wax Flew to collect his rural tax; The valleys dried and gaily flowered; Herds low, and under night’s dark veil Already sings the nightingale. II Mournful is thine approach to me, O Spring, thou chosen time of love! What agitation languidly My spirit and my blood doth move, What sad emotions o’er me steal When first upon my cheek I feel The breath of Spring again renewed, Secure in rural quietude— Or, strange to me is happiness? Do all things which to mirth incline. And make a dark existence shine Inflict annoyance and distress Upon a soul inert and cloyed?— And is all light within destroyed? III Or, heedless of the leaves’ return Which Autumn late to earth consigned, Do we alone our losses mourn Of which the rustling woods remind? Or, when anew all Nature teems, Do we foresee in troubled dreams The coming of life’s Autumn drear. For which no springtime shall appear? Or, it may be, we inly seek, Wafted upon poetic wing, Some other long-departed Spring, Whose memories make the heart beat quick With thoughts of a far distant land, Of a strange night when the moon and— IV