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

      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.

      When will my hour of freedom come!

      Time, I invoke thee! favouring gales

      Awaiting on the shore I roam

      And beckon to the passing sails.

      Upon the highway of the sea

      When shall I wing my passage free

      On waves by tempests curdled o’er!

      ‘Tis time to quit this weary shore

      So uncongenial to my mind,

      To dream upon the sunny strand

      Of Africa, ancestral land[19],

      Of dreary Russia left behind,

      Wherein I felt love’s fatal dart,

      Wherein I buried left my heart.

      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 Onegin’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.

      And in reality one day

      The steward sent a note to tell

      How sick to death his uncle lay

      And wished to say to him farewell.

      Having this mournful document

      Perused, Eugene in postchaise went

      And hastened to his uncle’s side,

      But in his heart dissatisfied,

      Having for money’s sake alone

      Sorrow to counterfeit and wail —

      Thus we began our little tale —

      But, to his uncle’s mansion flown,

      He found him on the table laid,

      A due which must to earth be paid.

      The courtyard full of serfs he sees,

      And from the country all around

      Had come both friends and enemies —

      Funeral amateurs abound!

      The body they consigned to rest,

      And then made merry pope and guest,

      With serious air then went away

      As men who much had done that day.

      Lo! my Onegin rural lord!

      Of mines and meadows, woods and lakes,

      He now a full possession takes,

      He who economy abhorred,

      Delighted much his former ways

      To vary for a few brief days.

      For two whole days it seemed a change

      To wander through the meadows still,

      The cool dark oaken grove to range,

      To listen to the rippling rill.

      But on the third of grove and mead

      He took no more the slightest heed;

      They made him feel inclined to doze;

      And the conviction soon arose,

      Ennui can in the country dwell

      Though without palaces and streets,

      Cards, balls, routs, poetry or fetes;

      On him spleen mounted sentinel

      And like his shadow dogged his life,

      Or better, – like a faithful wife.

      I was for calm existence made,

      For rural solitude and dreams,

      My lyre sings sweeter in the shade

      And more imagination teems.

      On innocent delights I dote,

      Upon my lake I love to float,

      For law I far niente take

      And every morning I awake

      The child of sloth and liberty.

      I slumber much, a little read,

      Of fleeting glory take no heed.

      In former years thus did not I

      In idleness and tranquil joy

      The happiest days of life employ?

      Love, flowers, the country, idleness

      And fields my joys have ever been;

      I like the difference to express

      Between myself and my Eugene,

      Lest the malicious reader or

      Some one or other editor

      Of keen sarcastic intellect

      Herein my portrait should detect,

      And impiously should declare,

      To sketch myself that I have tried

      Like Byron, bard of scorn and pride,

      As if impossible it were

      To write of any other elf

      Than one’s own fascinating self.

      Here I remark all poets are

      Love to idealize inclined;

      I have dreamed many a vision fair

      And the recesses of my mind

      Retained the image, though short-lived,

      Which afterwards the muse revived.

      Thus