Portrayed contemporary man

As the reflection of his age,

His immorality of mind

To arid selfishness resigned,

A visionary personage

With his exasperated sense,

His energy and impotence.

XXI.

And numerous pages had preserved

The sharp incisions of his nail,

And these the attentive maid observed

With eye precise and without fail.

Tattiana saw with trepidation

By what idea or observation

Oneguine was the most impressed,

In what he merely acquiesced.

Upon those margins she perceived

Oneguine's pencillings. His mind

Made revelations undesigned,

Of what he thought and what believed,

A dagger, asterisk, or note

Interrogation to denote.

XXII.

And my Tattiana now began

To understand by slow degrees

More clearly, God be praised, the man,

Whom autocratic fate's decrees

Had bid her sigh for without hope -

A dangerous, gloomy misanthrope,

Being from hell or heaven sent,

Angel or fiend malevolent.

Which is he? or an imitation,

A bogy conjured up in joke,

A Russian in Childe Harold's cloak,