Eugene Oneguine [Onegin]. A Romance of Russian Life in Verse

How oft, when on a summer night Transparent o'er the Neva beamed The firmament in mellow light, And when the watery mirror gleamed No more with pale Diana's rays,[18] We called to mind our youthful days— The days of love and of romance!Then would we muse as in a trance, Impressionable for an hour, And breathe the balmy breath of night; And like the prisoner's our delight Who for the greenwood quits his tower, As on the rapid wings of thought The early days of life we sought.

XLII

Absorbed in melancholy mood And o'er the granite coping bent, Oneguine meditative stood, E'en as the poet says he leant.[19]'Tis silent all! Alone the cries Of the night sentinels arise And from the Millionaya afar[20] The sudden rattling of a car.Lo! on the sleeping river borne, A boat with splashing oar floats by, And now we hear delightedly A jolly song and distant horn; But sweeter in a midnight dream Torquato Tasso's strains I deem.

XLIII

Ye billows of blue Hadria's sea, O Brenta, once more we shall meet And, inspiration firing me, Your magic voices I shall greet, Whose tones Apollo's sons inspire, And after Albion's proud lyre [21] Possess my love and sympathy.The nights of golden Italy I'll pass beneath the firmament, Hid in the gondola's dark shade, Alone with my Venetian maid, Now talkative, now reticent; From her my lips shall learn the tongue Of love which whilom Petrarch sung.

XLIV

When will my hour of freedom come!Time, I invoke thee! favouring galesAwaiting on the shore I roamAnd beckon to the passing sails.Upon the highway of the seaWhen shall I wing my passage freeOn waves by tempests curdled o'er!'Tis time to quit this weary shoreSo uncongenial to my mind,To dream upon the sunny strandOf Africa, ancestral land,[22]Of dreary Russia left behind,Wherein I felt love's fatal dart,Wherein I buried left my heart. 

XLV

Eugene designed with me to start And visit many a foreign clime, But Fortune cast our lots apart For a protracted space of time.Just at that time his father died, And soon Oneguine's door beside Of creditors a hungry rout Their claims and explanations shout.But Eugene, hating litigation And with his lot in life content, To a surrender gave consent, Seeing in this no deprivation, Or counting on his uncle's death And what the old man might bequeath.

XLVI