Евгений Онегин / Eugene Onegin

XLII

Absorbed in melancholy mood

And o’er the granite coping bent,

Onegin meditative stood,

E’en as the poet says he leant.[17 - Refers to Mouravieff’s Goddess of the Neva. At St. Petersburg the banks of the Neva are lined throughout with splendid granite quays.]

�Tis silent all! Alone the cries

Of the night sentinels arise

And from the Millionaya[18 - A street running parallel to the Neva, and leading from the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace and Garden.] afar

The sudden rattling of a car.

Lo! on the sleeping river borne,

A boat with splashing oar floats by,

And now we hear delightedly

A jolly song and distant horn;

But sweeter in a midnight dream

Torquato Tasso’s strains I deem.

XLIII

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.

XLIV

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 - The poet was, on his mother’s side, of African extraction, a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of his imagination.

His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal, was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal’s brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to St. Petersburg for the purpose of ransoming him; but Peter would not surrender his godson who died at the age of ninety-two, having attained the rank of general in the Russian service.],

Of dreary Russia left behind,

Wherein I felt love’s fatal dart,

Wherein I buried left my heart.