At neighbour’s monument submissive He dedicated him a sigh;
His heart was sad, his voice was mournful.
‘Ah, poor Yorick, said he, joyful
He kept me often in his hands, While I could show many pranks
With medal for Ochakov playing, Intended Olga for my wife
And wondered: would he be alive?’
Sincerely, in grief embracing
His heart, Vladimir qickly penned At tomb a madrigal by hand.
XXXVIII
By writing verse, the dismal mourner Of parents, with running eyes,
The ashes patriarchal honoured.
Alas! On furrows of lives
New generations by some reason, At secret will of great provision
Arise and ripen, then will fall, And others after them come all,
To-day frivolous generation Matures, stirs, already tests
Grandfathers to the tombs do press, It comes, the time of exitation,
Grandchildren once upon good day Will press from world all us away.
XXXIX
Meanwhile in life you try to revel, As much as I you take form it!
I grasp its vanity, and never Too much I was attached to it;
For fantoms I my eyelids closed; But some remote dear hopes
Sometimes are troubling wit and heart: Without printing pretty mark
To leave the world I would he sorry.
I live and write not for applause,
But, seems to me I’d wish, of course To fill my fate with kind of glory.
In hope that by future friend Of me some sound will be said.
XL
The heart of somebody he’ll cherish, Arid, kept by touch of truthful fate,
Perhaps, in Lethe won’t perish My verse, by wit and heart well made;
Perhaps, in front of portrait famous, To people future ignoramous
Will show my renowned face And say: ‘It’s poet of grace!’
Accept you all my thankful feelings Admirer of peaceful muse,
Ah, you, whose memory will fuse In verse my flying feeble dealings,
Whose grateful, feeling, truthful hand Will pat the fame of old man!
CHAPTER THREE
Fille etait fille, elle etait amourese. She was a girl She was in love.
Malfilatre.
I
‘What way?
You poets, are queer!’ -Good bye, Onegin, time has gone.
‘I don’t hamper you, but dear, For evenings where have you gone?
-To Larin’s -’Oh, looks it strangely: To kill your pretty evenings daily…
Forgive me, isn’t it too hard?’ -For me it’s not - ‘But dear bard,
I don’t grasp despite endeavours; You listen to (if I am right?)
This Russian family seems light, To all the guests it’s always zealous,
The jams, eternal talk of all: Of rain, of flax, of horses’ stall…’
II
-In this I see yet no troubles…
‘But trouble is: they are such bores’.
-I hate your world of fashion marbles, Much more I like the world indoors,