Habit alleviates the grief

      Inseparable from our lot;

      This great discovery relief

      And consolation soon begot.

      And then she soon ’twixt work and leisure

      Found out the secret how at pleasure

      To dominate her worthy lord,

      And harmony was soon restored.

      The workpeople she superintended,

      Mushrooms for winter salted down,

      Kept the accounts, shaved many a crown[23],

      The bath on Saturdays attended,

      When angry beat her maids, I grieve,

      And all without her husband’s leave.

      In her friends’ albums, time had been,

      With blood instead of ink she scrawled,

      Baptized Prascovia Pauline,

      And in her conversation drawled.

      She wore her corset tightly bound,

      The Russian N with nasal sound

      She would pronounce a la Francaise;

      But soon she altered all her ways,

      Corset and album and Pauline,

      Her sentimental verses all,

      She soon forgot, began to call

      Akulka who was once Celine,

      And had with waddling in the end

      Her caps and night-dresses to mend.

      As for her spouse he loved her dearly,

      In her affairs ne’er interfered,

      Entrusted all to her sincerely,

      In dressing-gown at meals appeared.

      Existence calmly sped along,

      And oft at eventide a throng

      Of friends unceremonious would

      Assemble from the neighbourhood:

      They growl a bit – they scandalise —

      They crack a feeble joke and smile —

      Thus the time passes and meanwhile

      Olga the tea must supervise —

      ‘Tis time for supper, now for bed,

      And soon the friendly troop hath fled.

      They in a peaceful life preserved

      Customs by ages sanctified,

      Strictly the Carnival observed,

      Ate Russian pancakes at Shrovetide,

      Twice in the year to fast were bound,

      Of whirligigs were very fond,

      Of Christmas carols, song and dance;

      When people with long countenance

      On Trinity Sunday yawned at prayer,

      Three tears they dropt with humble mein

      Upon a bunch of lovage green;

      Kvass needful was to them as air;

      On guests their servants used to wait

      By rank as settled by the State.[24]

      Thus age approached, the common doom,

      And death before the husband wide

      Opened the portals of the tomb

      And a new diadem supplied.[25]

      Just before dinner-time he slept,

      By neighbouring families bewept,

      By children and by faithful wife

      With deeper woe than others’ grief.

      He was an honest gentleman,

      And where at last his bones repose

      The epitaph on marble shows:

      Demetrius Larine, sinful man,

      Servant of God and brigadier,

      Enjoyeth peaceful slumber here.

      To his Penates now returned,

      Vladimir Lenski visited

      His neighbour’s lowly tomb and mourned

      Above the ashes of the dead.

      There long time sad at heart he stayed:

      “Poor Yorick,” mournfully he said,

      “How often in thine arms I lay;

      How with thy medal I would play,

      The Medal Otchakoff conferred![26]

      To me he would his Olga give,

      Would whisper: shall I so long live?” —

      And by a genuine sorrow stirred,

      Lenski his pencil-case took out

      And an elegiac poem wrote.

      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.

      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.

      Perchance