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Terrible tales she loved to hear.
And when for Olga nurse arrayed
In the broad meadow a gay rout,
All the young people round about,
At prisoner’s base she never played.
Their noisy laugh her soul annoyed,
Their giddy sports she ne’er enjoyed.
XXVIII
She loved upon the balcony
To anticipate the break of day,
When on the pallid eastern sky
The starry beacons fade away,
The horizon luminous doth grow,
Morning’s forerunners, breezes blow
And gradually day unfolds.
In winter, when Night longer holds
A hemisphere beneath her sway,
Longer the East inert reclines
Beneath the moon which dimly shines,
And calmly sleeps the hours away,
At the same hour she oped her eyes
And would by candlelight arise.
XXIX
Romances pleased her from the first,
Her all in all did constitute;
In love adventures she was versed,
Rousseau and Richardson to boot.
Not a bad fellow was her father
Though superannuated rather;
In books he saw nought to condemn
But, as he never opened them,
Viewed them with not a little scorn,
And gave himself but little pain
His daughter’s book to ascertain
Which ’neath her pillow lay till morn.
His wife was also mad upon
The works of Mr. Richardson.
XXX
She was thus fond of Richardson
Not that she had his works perused,
Or that adoring Grandison
That rascal Lovelace she abused;
But that Princess Pauline of old,
Her Moscow cousin, often told
The tale of these romantic men;
Her husband was a bridegroom then,
And she despite herself would waste
Sighs on another than her lord
Whose qualities appeared to afford
More satisfaction to her taste.
Her Grandison was in the Guard,
A noted fop who gambled hard.
XXXI
Like his, her dress was always nice,
The height of fashion, fitting tight,
But contrary to her advice
The girl in marriage they unite.
Then, her distraction to allay,
The bridegroom sage without delay
Removed her to his country seat,
Where God alone knows whom she met.
She struggled hard at first thus pent,
Night separated from her spouse,
Then became busy with the house,
First reconciled and then content;
Habit was given us in distress
By Heaven in lieu of happiness.
XXXII
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 serfs destined for military service used to have a portion of their heads shaved as a distinctive mark.],
The bath on Saturdays attended,
When angry beat her maids, I grieve,
And all without her husband’s leave.
XXXIII
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.
XXXIV
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.
XXXV
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 - The foregoing stanza requires explanation. Russian pancakes or “blinni” are consumed vigorously by the lower orders during the Carnival. At other times it is difficult to procure them, at any rate in the large towns. The Russian peasants are childishly fond of whirligigs, which are also much in vogue during the Carnival. “Christmas Carols” is not an exact equivalent for the Russian phrase. “Podbliudni pessni,” are literally “dish songs,” or songs used with dishes (of water) during the “sviatki” or Holy Nights, which extend from Christmas to Twelfth Night, for purposes of divination. Reference will again be made to this superstitious practice, which is not confined to Russia.“Song and dance,” the well-known “khorovod,” in which the dance proceeds to vocal music.“Lovage,” the Levisticum officinalis, is a hardy plant growing very far north, though an inhabitant of our own kitchen gardens. The passage containing the reference to the three tears and Trinity Sunday was at first deemed irreligious by the Russian censors, and consequently expunged.Kvass is of various sorts: there is the common kvass of fermented rye used by the peasantry, and the more expensive kvass of the restaurants, iced and flavoured with various fruits.The final two lines refer to the “Tchin,” or Russian social hierarchy. There are fourteen grades in the Tchin assigning relative rank and precedence to the members of the various departments of the State, civil, military, naval, court, scientific and educational. The military and naval grades from the 14th up to the 7th confer personal nobility only, whilst above the 7th hereditary rank is acquired. In the remaining departments, civil or otherwise, personal nobility is only attained with the 9th grade, hereditary with the 4th.]
XXXVI
Thus age approached, the common doom,
And death before the husband wide
Opened the portals of the tomb
And a new diadem supplied.[25 - A play upon the word “venetz,” crown, which also signifies a nimbus or glory, and is the symbol of marriage from the fact of two gilt crowns being held over the heads of the bride and bridegroom during the ceremony. The literal meaning of the passage is therefore: his earthly marriage was dissolved and a heavenly one was contracted.]
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.
XXXVII
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 - The fortress of Otchakoff was taken by storm on the 18th December 1788 by a Russian army under Prince Potemkin. Thirty thousand Turks are said to have perished during the assault and ensuing massacre.]
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.
XXXVIII
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.
XXXIX
Meantime, drink deeply of the flow
Of frivolous existence, friends;
Its insignificance I know
