Eugene Onegin (Russian Literature Classic). Alexander Pushkin

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      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,²¹

      Of dreary Russia left behind,

      Wherein I felt love’s fatal dart,

      Wherein I buried left my heart.

²¹ 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.

      XLV

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      Eugene designed with me to start

      And visit many a foreign clime,

      But Fortune cast our lots apart

      For a protracted space of time.

      Just at that time his father died,

      And soon Oneguine’s door beside

      Of creditors a hungry rout

      Their claims and explanations shout.

      But Eugene, hating litigation

      And with his lot in life content,

      To a surrender gave consent,

      Seeing in this no deprivation,

      Or counting on his uncle’s death

      And what the old man might bequeath.

      XLVI

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      And in reality one day

      The steward sent a note to tell

      How sick to death his uncle lay

      And wished to say to him farewell.

      Having this mournful document

      Perused, Eugene in postchaise went

      And hastened to his uncle’s side,

      But in his heart dissatisfied,

      Having for money’s sake alone

      Sorrow to counterfeit and wail —

      Thus we began our little tale —

      But, to his uncle’s mansion flown,

      He found him on the table laid,

      A due which must to earth be paid.

      XLVII

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      The courtyard full of serfs he sees,

      And from the country all around

      Had come both friends and enemies —

      Funeral amateurs abound!

      The body they consigned to rest,

      And then made merry pope and guest,

      With serious air then went away

      As men who much had done that day.

      Lo! my Oneguine rural lord!

      Of mines and meadows, woods and lakes,

      He now a full possession takes,

      He who economy abhorred,

      Delighted much his former ways

      To vary for a few brief days.