every gesture, every phrase
In true interpretation hates:
Whose heart experience icy made
And yet oblivion forbade.

End of Canto The Fourth

CANTO THE FIFTH

The Fete

'Oh, do not dream these fearful dreams,
O my Svetlana.'--Joukovski

Canto The Fifth

[Note: Mikhailovskoe, 1825-6]

I

That year the autumn season late
Kept lingering on as loath to go,
All Nature winter seemed to await,
Till January fell no snow--
The third at night. Tattiana wakes
Betimes, and sees, when morning breaks,
Park, garden, palings, yard below
And roofs near morn blanched o'er with snow;
Upon the windows tracery,
The trees in silvery array,
Down in the courtyard magpies gay,
And the far mountains daintily
O'erspread with Winter's carpet bright,
All so distinct, and all so white!

II

Winter! The peasant blithely goes
To labour in his sledge forgot,
His pony sniffing the fresh snows
Just manages a feeble trot
Though deep he sinks into the drift;
Forth the _kibitka_ gallops swift,(48)
Its driver seated on the rim
In scarlet sash and sheepskin trim;
Yonder the household lad doth run,
Placed in a sledge his terrier black,
Himself transformed into a hack;
To freeze his finger hath begun,
He laughs, although it aches from cold,
His mother from the door doth scold.

[Note 48: The "kibitka," properly speaking, whether on wheels
or runners, is a vehicle with a hood not unlike a big cradle.]

III

In scenes like these it may be though,
Ye feel but little interest,
They are all natural and low,
Are not with elegance impressed.
Another bard with art divine
Hath pictured in his gorgeous line
The first appearance of the snows
And all the joys which Winter knows.
He will delight you, I am sure,
When he in ardent verse portrays
Secret excursions made in sleighs;
But competition I abjure
Either with him or thee in song,
Bard of the Finnish maiden young.(49)

[Note 49: The allusions in the foregoing stanza are in the first
place to a poem entitled "The First Snow," by Prince Viazemski
and secondly to "Eda," by Baratynski, a poem descriptive of life
in Finland.]

IV

Tattiana, Russian to the core,
Herself not knowing well the reason,
The Russian winter did adore
And the cold beauties of the season:
On sunny days the glistening rime,
Sledging, the snows, which at the time
Of sunset glow with rosy light,
The misty evenings ere Twelfth Night.
These evenings as in days of old
The Larinas would celebrate,