The bronze Horseman / Медный всадник. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Their ancient bondage and their rancorous

The Finnish waves shall bury deep

Now vex with idle spite that cankers

Our Peter’s everlasting sleep!

There was a dreadful time, we keep

Still freshly on our memories painted;

And you, my friends, shall be acquainted

By me, with all that history:

A grievous record it will be.

I

O’er darkened Petrograd there rolled

November’s breath of autumn cold,

And Neva with her boisterous billow

Splashed on her shapely bounding wall

And tossed in restless rise and fall

Like a sick man upon his pillow.

Twas late, and dark had fallen; the rain

Beat fiercely on the window-pane;

A wind that howled and wailed was blowing.

Twas then that young Evgeny came

Home from a party – I am going

To call our hero by that name,

For it sounds pleasing, and moreover

My pen once liked it; why discover

The needless surname? – True, it may

Have been illustrious in past ages,

– Rung, through tradition, in the pages

Of Karamzin; and yet, today

That name is never recollected,

By Rumour and the World rejected.

Our hero – somewhere – served the State;

He shunned the presence of the great;

Lived in Kolomna; for the fate

Cared not of forbears dead and rotten,

Or antique matters long forgotten.

So, home Evgeny came, and tossed

His cloak aside; undressed; and sinking

Sleepless upon his bed, was lost

In sundry meditations – thinking

Of what? – How poor he was; how pain

And toil might some day hope to gain

An honored, free, assured position;

How God, it might be, in addition

Would grant him better brains and pay.

Such idle folk there were, and they,

Lucky and lazy, not too brightly

Gifted, lived easily and lightly;

And he – was only in his second

Year at the desk.

He further reckoned

Those still the ugly weather held;

That still the river swelled and swelled;

That almost now from Neva’s eddy

The bridges had been moved already;

That from Parasha he must be

Parted for some two days, or three.