Eugene Onegin

by Alexander Pushkin

He sang of love, by love commanded, A simple and affecting tune, As clear as maiden thoughts, as candid As infant slumber, as the moon In heaven’s peaceful desert flying, That queen of secrets and of sighing. He sang of parting and of pain, Of something vague, of mists and rain; He sang the rose, romantic flower, And distant lands where once he’d shed His living tears upon the bed Of silence at a lonely hour;

Or saddened by the re-emergence Of leaves that perished in the fall, We heed the rustling wood’s resurgence, As bitter losses we recall; Or do we mark with lamentation How nature’s lively renovation Compares with our own fading youth, For which no spring will come, in truth? Perhaps in thought we reassemble, Within a dream to which we cling, Some other and more ancient spring, That sets the aching heart atremble With visions of some distant place, A magic night, the moon’s embrace.…