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I

   On noticing that Vladimir had vanished,    Onegin, by ennui pursued again,    by Olga's side sank into meditation,   pleased with his vengeance.    After him Ólinka yawned too,    sought Lenski with her eyes,    and the endless cotillion   irked her like an oppressive dream.    But it has ended. They go in to supper.    The beds are made. Guests are assigned    night lodgings — from the entrance hall  even to the maids' quarters. Restful sleep    by all is needed. My Onegin    alone has driven home to sleep.

II

   All has grown quiet. In the drawing room    the heavy Pustyakov    snores with his heavy better half.   Gvozdin, Buyanov, Petushkov,    and Flyanov (who is not quite well)    have bedded in the dining room on chairs,    with, on the floor, Monsieur Triquet   in underwaistcoat and old nightcap.    All the young ladies, in Tatiana's    and Olga's rooms, are wrapped in sleep.    Alone, sadly by Dian's beam  illumined at the window, poor Tatiana    is not asleep    and gazes out on the dark field.

III

   With his unlooked-for apparition,    the momentary softness of his eyes,    and odd conduct with Olga,   to the depth of her soul    she's penetrated. She is quite unable    to understand him. Jealous    anguish perturbs her,   as if a cold hand pressed    her heart; as if beneath her an abyss    yawned black and dinned....    “I shall perish,” says Tanya,  “but perishing from him is sweet.    I murmur not: why murmur?    He cannot give me happiness.”

IV

   Forward, forward, my story!    A new persona claims us.    Five versts from Krasnogórie,   Lenski's estate, there lives    and thrives up to the present time    in philosophical reclusion    Zarétski, formerly a brawler,   the hetman of a gaming gang,    chieftain of rakehells, pothouse tribune,    but now a kind and simple    bachelor paterfamilias,  a steadfast friend, a peaceable landowner,    and even an honorable man:    thus does our age correct itself!

V

   Time was, the monde's obsequious voice    used to extol his wicked pluck:    he, it is true, could from a pistol   at twelve yards hit an ace,    and, furthermore, in battle too    once, in real rapture, he distinguished    himself by toppling from his Kalmuk steed   boldly into the mud,    swine drunk, and to the French    fell prisoner (prized hostage!) —    a modern Regulus, the god of honor,  ready to yield anew to bonds    so as to drain on credit at Véry's    two or three bottles every morning.

VI

   Time was, he bantered drolly,    knew how to gull a fool    and capitally fool a clever man,   for all to see or on the sly;    though some tricks of his, too,    did not remain unchastised;    though sometimes he himself, too, got   trapped like a simpleton.    He knew how to conduct a gay dispute,    make a reply keen or obtuse,    now craftily to hold his tongue,  now craftily to raise a rumpus,    how to get two young friends to quarrel    and place them on the marked-out ground,

VII

   or have them make it up    so as to lunch all three,    and later secretly defame them   with a gay quip, with prate....    Sed alia tempora! Daredevilry    (like love's dream, yet another caper)    passes with lively youth.   As I've said, my Zarétski,    beneath the racemosas and the pea trees    having at last found shelter    from tempests, lives like a true sage,  plants cabbages like Horace,    breeds ducks and geese,    and teaches [his] children the A B C.

VIII

   He was not stupid; and my Eugene,    while rating low the heart in him,    liked both the spirit of his judgments   and his sane talk of this and that.    He would frequent him    with pleasure, and therefore was not at all    surprised at morn   when he saw him;    the latter, after the first greeting, interrupting    the started conversation,    with eyes atwinkle, to Onegin  handed a billet from the poet.    Onegin went up to the window    and read it to himself.

IX

   It was a pleasant, gentlemanly,    brief challenge or cartel:    politely, with cold clearness, to a duel   Lenski called out his friend.    Onegin, on a first impulsion    to the envoy of such an errand    turning, without superfluous words   said he was “always ready.”    Zaretski got up without explanations —    did not want to stay longer,    having at home a lot of things to do —  and forthwith left; but Eugene,    alone remaining with his soul,    felt ill-contented with himself.

X

   And serve him right: on strict examination,    he, having called his own self to a secret court,    accused himself of much:   first, it had been already wrong of him    to make fun of a timid, tender love    so casually yesternight;    and secondly: why, let a poet   indulge in nonsense! At eighteen    'tis pardonable. Eugene,    loving the youth with all his heart,    ought to have shown himself to be  no bandyball of prejudices,    no fiery boy, no scrapper, but a man    of honor and of sense.

XI

   He might have manifested feelings    instead of bristling like a beast;    he ought to have disarmed   the youthful heart. “But now    too late; the time has flown away....    Moreover,” he reflects, “in this affair    an old duelist has intervened;   he's wicked, he's a gossip, he talks glibly....    Of course, contempt should be the price    of his droll sallies; but the whisper,    the snickering of fools...”  And here it is — public opinion!    Honor's mainspring, our idol!    And here is what the world turns on!

XII

   The poet, with impatient enmity    boiling, awaits at home the answer.    And here the answer solemnly   by the grandiloquent neighbor is brought.    Now, what a boon 'tis for the jealous one!    He had kept fearing that the scamp    might joke his way out somehow,   a trick devising and his breast    averting from the pistol.    The doubts are now resolved:    tomorrow to the mill they must  drive before daybreak,    at one another raise the cock,    and at the thigh or at the temple aim.

XIII

   Having decided to detest    the coquette, boiling Lenski did not wish    to see before the duel Olga.   The sun, his watch he kept consulting;    at last he gave it up —    and found himself at the fair neighbors'.    He thought he would embarrass Ólinka,   confound her by his coming;    but nothing of the sort: just as before    to welcome the poor songster    Olinka skipped down from the porch,  akin to giddy hope,    spry, carefree, gay — in fact, exactly    the same as she had been.

XIV

   “Why did you vanish yesternight so early?”    was Olinka's first question.    In Lenski all the senses clouded,   and silently he hung his head.    Jealousy and vexation disappeared    before this clarity of glance,    before this soft simplicity,   before this sprightly soul!...    He gazes with sweet tenderness;    he sees: he is still loved!    Already, by remorse beset,  he is prepared to beg her pardon,    he quivers, can't find words:    he's happy, he is almost well....

XVII

   And pensive, spiritless again    before his darling Olga,    Vladimir cannot make himself remind her   of yesterday;    “I,” he reflects, “shall be her savior.    I shall not suffer a depraver    with fire of sighs and compliments   to tempt a youthful heart,    nor let a despicable, venomous    worm gnaw a lily's little stalk,    nor have a blossom two morns old  wither while yet half blown.”    All this, friends, meant:    I have a pistol duel with a pal.

XVIII

   If he had known what a wound burned    the heart of my Tatiana! If Tatiana    had been aware, if she   could have known that tomorrow    Lenski and Eugene    were to compete for the tomb's shelter,    ah, then, perhaps, her love   might have united the two friends again!    But none, even by chance, had yet discovered    that passion.    Onegin about everything was silent;  Tatiana pined away in secret;    alone the nurse    might have known — but she was slow-witted.

XIX

   All evening Lenski was abstracted,    now taciturn, now gay again;    but he who has been fostered by the Muse   is always thus; with knitted brow    he'd sit down at the clavichord    and play but chords on it;    or else, his gaze directing toward Olga,   he'd whisper, “I am happy, am I not?”    But it is late; time to depart. In him    the heart contracted, full of anguish;    as he took leave of the young maiden,  it seemed to break asunder.    She looks him in the face. “What is the matter with you?”    “Nothing.” And he makes for the porch.

XX

   On coming home his pistols he inspected,    then back into their case    he put them, and, undressed,   by candle opened Schiller;    but there's one thought infolding him;    the sad heart in him does not slumber:    Olga, in beauty   ineffable, he sees before him.    Vladimir shuts the book,    takes up his pen; his verses —    full of love's nonsense — sound  and flow. Aloud    he reads them in a lyric fever,    like drunken D[elvig] at a feast.

XXI

   The verses chanced to be preserved;    I have them; here they are:    Whither, ah! whither are ye fled,   my springtime's golden days?    “What has the coming day in store for me?    In vain my gaze attempts to grasp it;    in deep gloom it lies hidden.   It matters not; fate's law is just.    Whether I fall, pierced by the dart, or whether    it flies by — all is right:    of waking and of sleep  comes the determined hour;    blest is the day of cares,    blest, too, is the advent of darkness!

XXII

   “The ray of dawn will gleam tomorrow,    and brilliant day will scintillate;    whilst I, perhaps — I shall descend   into the tomb's mysterious shelter,    and the young poet's memory    slow Lethe will engulf;    the world will forget me; but thou,   wilt thou come, maid of beauty,    to shed a tear over the early urn    and think: he loved me,    to me alone he consecrated  the doleful daybreak of a stormy life!...    Friend of my heart, desired friend, come,    come: I'm thy spouse!”

XXIII

   Thus did he write, “obscurely    and limply” (what we call romanticism —    though no romanticism at all   do I see here; but what is that to us?),    and finally, before dawn, letting sink    his weary head,    upon the fashionable word   “ideal,” Lenski dozed off gently;    but hardly had he lost himself    in sleep's bewitchment when the neighbor    entered the silent study  and wakened Lenski with the call,    “Time to get up: past six already.    Onegin's sure to be awaiting us.”

XXIV

   But he was wrong: at that time Eugene    was sleeping like the dead.    The shadows of the night now wane,   and Vesper by the cock is greeted;    Onegin soundly sleeps away.    By now the sun rides high,    and shifting flurries   sparkle and spin; but still his bed    Onegin has not left,    still slumber hovers over him.    Now he awakes at last  and draws apart the curtain's flaps;    looks — and sees that already    it is long since time to drive off.

XXV

   Quickly he rings — and his French valet,    Guillot, comes running in,    offers him dressing gown and slippers,   and hands him linen.    Onegin hastes to dress,    orders his valet to get ready    to drive together with him and to take   along with him also the combat case.    The racing sleigh is ready; in he gets;    flies to the mill. Apace they come.    He bids his valet carry after him  Lepage's fell tubes    and has the horses moved away    into a field toward two oaklings.

XXVI

   On the dam leaning, Lenski had been waiting    impatiently for a long time;    meanwhile Zaretski, a rural mechanic,   with the millstone was finding fault.    Onegin with apologies came up.    “But where,” quoth with amazement    Zaretski, “where's your second?”   In duels classicist and pedant, he    liked method out of feeling and allowed    to stretch one's man not anyhow    but by the strict rules of the art  according to all the traditions    of ancientry    (which we must praise in him).

XXVII

   “My second?” Eugene said.    “Here's he: my friend, Monsieur Guillot.    I don't foresee   objections to my presentation:    although he is an unknown man,    quite surely he's an honest chap.”    Zaretski bit his lip. Onegin   asked Lenski: “Well, are we to start?”    “Let's start if you are willing,” said    Vladimir. And they went    behind the mill.  While, at a distance, our Zaretski and the “honest chap”    enter into a solemn compact,    the two foes stand with lowered eyes.

XXVIII

   Foes! Is it long since bloodthirst    turned them away from one another?    Is it long since they shared their hours of leisure,   meals, thoughts, and doings    in friendliness? Now, wickedly,    similar to hereditary foes,    as in a frightful, enigmatic dream,   in silence, for each other they    prepare destruction coolly....    Should they not burst out laughing while    their hand is not yet crimsoned?  Should they not amiably part?...    But wildly beau-monde enmity    is of false shame afraid.

XXIX

   The pistols now have gleamed. The mallet clanks    against the ramrod. The balls go    into the polyhedral barrel,   and the cock clicks for the first time.    The powder in a grayish streamlet    now pours into the pan. The jagged,    securely screwed-in flint   anew is drawn back. Disconcerted    Guillot behind a near stump takes his stand.    The two foes shed their cloaks.    Zaretski paces off thirty-two steps  with excellent accuracy; his friends    apart he places at the farthest mark,    and each takes up his pistol.

XXX

   “Now march.” The two foes, coolly,    not aiming yet,    with firm tread, slowly, steadily   traversed four paces,    four mortal stairs.    His pistol Eugene then,    not ceasing to advance,   gently the first began to raise.    Now they have stepped five paces more,    and Lenski, closing his left eye,    started to level also — but right then  Onegin fired.... The clock of fate    has struck: the poet    in silence drops his pistol.

XXXI

   Softly he lays his hand upon his breast    and falls. His misty gaze    expresses death, not pain.   Thus, slowly, down the slope of hills,    shining with sparkles in the sun,    a lump of snow descends.    Deluged with instant cold,   Onegin hastens to the youth,    looks, calls him... vainly:    he is no more. The young bard has    found an untimely end!  The storm has blown; the beauteous bloom    has withered at sunrise; the fire    upon the altar has gone out!...

XXXII

   Stirless he lay, and strange    was his brow's languid peace.    Under the breast he had been shot clean through;   steaming, the blood flowed from the wound.    One moment earlier    in this heart inspiration,    enmity, hope, and love had throbbed,   life effervesced, blood burned;    now, as in a deserted house,    all in it is both still and dark,    it has become forever silent.  The window boards are shut. The panes with chalk    are whitened over. The chatelaine is gone.    But where, God wot. All trace is lost.

XXXIII

   With an insolent epigram    'tis pleasant to enrage a bungling foe;    pleasant to see how, bending stubbornly   his buttsome horns, he in the mirror    looks at himself involuntarily    and is ashamed to recognize himself;    more pleasant, friends, if, as the fool he is,   he howls out: It is I!    Still pleasanter — in silence to prepare    an honorable grave for him    and quietly at his pale forehead  aim, at a gentlemanly distance;    but to dispatch him to his fathers    will hardly pleasant be for you.

XXXIV

   What, then, if by your pistol    be smitten a young pal    who with a saucy glance or repartee   or any other bagatelle    insulted you over the bottle,    or even himself, in fiery vexation,    to combat proudly challenged you?   Say: what sensation    would take possession of your soul    when, motionless upon the ground,    in front of you, with death upon his brow,  he by degrees would stiffen,    when he'd be deaf    and silent to your desperate appeal?

XXXV

   In anguish of the heart's remorse,    his hand squeezing the pistol,    at Lenski Eugene looks.   “Well, what — he's dead,” pronounced the neighbor.    Dead!... With this dreadful interjection    smitten, Onegin with a shudder    walks hence and calls his men.   Zaretski carefully lays on the sleigh    the frozen corpse;    home he is driving the dread lading.    Sensing the corpse,  the horses snort and jib,    with white foam wetting the steel bit,    and like an arrow off they fly.

XXXVI

   My friends, you're sorry for the poet:    in the bloom of glad hopes,    not having yet fulfilled them for the world,   scarce out of infant clothes,    withered! Where is the ardent stir,    the noble aspiration    of young emotions and young thoughts,   exalted, tender, bold?    Where are love's turbulent desires,    the thirst for knowledges and work,    the dread of vice and shame,  and you, fond musings,    you, [token] of unearthly life,    you, dreams of sacred poetry!

XXXVII

   Perhaps, for the world's good    or, at the least, for glory he was born;    his silenced lyre might have aroused   a resonant, uninterrupted ringing    throughout the ages. There awaited    the poet, on the stairway of the world,    perhaps, a lofty stair.   His martyred shade has carried    away with him, perhaps,    a sacred mystery, and for us    dead is a life-creating voice,  and to his shade beyond the tomb's confines    will not rush up the hymn of races,    the blessing of the ages.

XXXIX

   And then again: perhaps,    an ordinary lot awaited    the poet. Years of youth would have elapsed:   in him the soul's fire would have cooled.    He would have changed in many ways,    have parted with the Muses, married,    up in the country, happy and cornute,   have worn a quilted dressing gown;    learned life in its reality,    at forty, had the gout,    drunk, eaten, moped, got fat, decayed,  and in his bed, at last,    died in the midst of children,    weepy females, and medicos.

XL

   But, reader, be it as it may,    alas, the young lover, the poet,    the pensive dreamer, has been killed   by a friend's hand!    There is a spot: left of the village    where inspiration's nursling dwelt,    two pine trees grow, united at the roots;   beneath them have meandered streamlets    of the neighboring valley's brook.    'Tis there the plowman likes to rest    and women reapers come to dip  their ringing pitchers in the waves;    there, by the brook, in the dense shade    a simple monument is set.

XLI

   Beneath it (as begins to drip    spring rain upon the herb of fields)    the herdsman, plaiting his pied shoe of bast,   sings of the Volga fishermen;    and the young townswoman who spends    the summer in the country,    when headlong on horseback, alone,   she scours the fields,    before it halts her steed,    tightening the leathern rein;    and, turning up the gauze veil of her hat,  she reads with skimming eyes    the plain inscription — and a tear    dims her soft eyes.

XLII

   And at a walk she rides in open champaign,    sunk in a reverie;    a long time, willy-nilly,   her soul is full of Lenski's fate;    and she reflects: “What has become of Olga?    Did her heart suffer long?    Or did the season of her tears soon pass?   And where's her sister now? And where, that shunner    of people and the world,    of modish belles the modish foe,    where's that begloomed eccentric,  the slayer of the youthful poet?”    In due time I shall give you an account    in detail about everything.

XLIII

   But not now. Though with all my heart    I love my hero;    though I'll return to him, of course;   but now I am not in the mood for him.    The years to austere prose incline,    the years chase pranksome rhyme away,    and I — with a sigh I confess —   more indolently dangle after her.    My pen has not its ancient disposition    to mar with scribblings fleeting leaves;    other chill dreams,  other stern cares,    both in the social hum and in the still    disturb my soul's sleep.

XLIV

   I have learned the voice of other desires,    I've come to know new sadness;    I have no expectations for the first,   and the old sadness I regret.    Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?    Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?    Can it be really true   that withered, withered is at last its garland?    Can it be true that really and indeed,    without elegiac conceits,    the springtime of my days is fled  (as I in jest kept saying hitherto),    and has it truly no return?    Can it be true that I'll be thirty soon?

XLV

   So! My noontide is come, and this    I must, I see, admit.    But, anyway, as friends let's part,   O my light youth!    My thanks for the delights,    the melancholy, the dear torments,    the hum, the storms, the feasts,   for all, for all your gifts    my thanks to you. In you    amidst turmoils and in the stillness    I have delighted... and in full.  Enough! With a clear soul    I now set out on a new course    to rest from my old life.

XLVI

   Let me glance back. Farewell now, coverts    where in the backwoods flowed my days,    fulfilled with passions and with indolence   and with the dreamings of a pensive soul.    And you, young inspiration,    stir my imagination,    the slumber of the heart enliven,   into my nook more often fly,    let not a poet's soul grow cold,    callous, crust-dry,    and finally be turned to stone  in the World's deadening intoxication    in that slough where with you    I bathe, dear friends!