"A sorceress! What had she said!...

Struck dumb was I by the admission

And felt a fool, a dunderhead

For all my store of erudition.

"But worse by far was that the spell

That I had cast worked far too well.

My shrivelled idol flared with passion;

She loved me - loved me to obsession!

Her grey lips twisted in a smile,

In graveyard tones the old hag muttered

The wildest of avowals, while

I suffered silently, in utter

Disgust and loathing, and upon

The ground my eyes kept. She wheezed on,

And though, by fits of coughing shaken,

So was she with her subject taken,

She never stopped. 'My poor heart is

For tender passion born and bliss,'

She croaked. ' 'Tis love alone I covet

And hunger for. I flame, I bum....

O come to me, for thee I yearn;

I'm dying, dying, my beloved!'

" 'Twas lustfully that she, Ruslan,

Was ogling me. Her bony fingers

Caught greedily at my caftan....

There to remain, knight, there to linger

Beside her was sheer agony;

I squeezed my eyes shut, for, you see,

I could not bear it any longer,

And broke away.... 'Knave! Thus to wrong me!'

She yelped. 'A pure maid's life-quite shattered!

Such villainy! For shame! For shame!

As if my love so little mattered!