And could not sleep. The morning light
From pale and weary clouds gleamed bright
On the still capital; no traces
Now of the woes of yesternight!
With royal purple it effaces
The mischief; all things are proceeding
In form and order as of old;
The people are already treading,
Impassive, in their fashion, cold,
Through the cleared thoroughfares, inheeding;
And now official folk forsake
Their last night’s refuge, as they make
Their way to duty. Greatly daring,
The huckster now takes heart, unbarring
His cellar, late the prey and sack
Of Neva, – hoping to get back
His heavy loss and wasted labor
Out of the pockets of his neighbor.
The drifted boats from each courtyard
Are carried.
To a certain bard,
A count, a favorite of heaven
To one Khvostov, the theme was given
To chant in his immortal song
How Neva’s shores had suffered wrong.
But my Evgeny, poor, sick fellow! —
Alas, the tumult in his brain
Had left him powerless to sustain
Those shocks of terror. For the bellow
Of riotous winds and Neva near
Resounded always in his ear;
A host of hideous thoughts attacked him,
A kind of nightmare rent and racked him,
And on he wandered silently;
And as the week, the month, went by,
Never came home. His habitation,
As time ran out, the landlord took,
And leased the now deserted nook
For a poor poet’s occupation.
Nor ever came Evgeny home
For his belongings; he would roam,
A stranger to the world; his ration
A morsel tendered in compassion
Out of a window; he would tramp
All day, and on the quay would camp
To sleep; his garments, old and fraying,
Were all in tatters and decaying.
And the malicious boys would pelt
The man with stones; and of the felt
The cabman’s whiplash on him flicking;
For he had lost the skill of picking
His footsteps, – deafened, it may be,
By fears that clamored inwardly.
So, dragging out his days, ill-fated,
He seemed like something mistreated,
No beast, nor yet of human birth,
Neither a denizen of earth
Nor phantom of the dead.
Belated
One night, on Neva wharf he slept.
Now summer days toward autumn crept;
A wet and stormy wind was blowing,
And Neva’s sullen waters flowing
Plashed on the wharf and muttered there
Complaining – beat the slippery stair
