God knows, whom by words you dart; Of elegies the precious code
Sometimes will give you all the rate Of all your own real fate.
XXXII
But hist!
D’you hear?
Critic strictly Demands from us: be getting rid
Of elegy’s bad garland quickly; To all the rhymers, friends indeed,
He shouts: ‘Stop your own crying And croaking the same, and whining,
And always pity of the past; Enough, of other sing you fast!’
-it’s right, but may be you will show The pipe, the dagger and the man;
Of thoughts dead capital again To raise from dead you’ll give a hope;
Is not it so, friend?
- Not, then!
You write the odes, gentlemen,
XXXIII
As they them wrote many years Of might, as it through ages came..’
-Just solemn odes you could hear!
Enough, my friend, its all the same!
-What said the satirist, remember!
Is cunning liric, who can render
The ‘else’s trends’, for you the best Among dull rhymers and the rest? -
‘But all the elegies are mere A trifle, aimless idle talk,
Meanwhile they most be not a mock, But honourable..!’ - l could here
Give arguments, but I do not: To quarrel ages don’t want.
XXXIV
Adorer of the glory, freedom, Immersed in own stormy thought,
Vladimir could have odes written, - To road them Olga never got.
Did happen any bard in tears To deer love to read with fears
His own works?
They say, they’d got For that the best in world reward.
Indeed, he’s blessed, the lover tranquil, Who can explain his own dreams
To object of his love and hymns, To beauty dear, nicely languid.
He’s blessed... But may be she has been Amused by other, not by him.
XXXV
But I my fruits of dreams am reading, And my harmonious ventured verse
Alone to my nurse, who’s being My old friend from youth and forth.
And after rather tedious dinner, When I, refreshing own inner,
Could catch a neighbour, who by chance Came in - by tragedy at once Him entertained.
Without jokes By bore and rhyme depressed, all day
I’m hiking round pretty lake, Some flocks of ducks by chance awoke,
And listening Id my singing rhyme From banks they all together fly.
XXXVI, XXXVII
And what’s Onegin doing?
Brothers!
I ask: be patient for a time;
His everyday employments rather In details I should well describe.
In summer Eugene lived like hermit: Past six was getting up in hamlet,
And to the river, lightly clad Beneath the mounting he went;
The Gulnare’s singer imitating {13} Across this Hellespont could swim:
At home coffee used to drink; Were poor journals for him waiting.