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.

[Note 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 Saint 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.

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.

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,