And my romance's open theme

Glittered in a perspective long,

And I discerned through Fancy's prism

Distinctly not its mechanism.

L

But ye to whom, when friendship heard,

The first-fruits of my tale I read,

As Saadi anciently averred—(86)

Some are afar and some are dead.

Without them Eugene is complete;

And thou, from whom Tattiana sweet;

Was drawn, ideal of my lay—

Ah! what hath fate not torn away!

Happy who quit life's banquet seat

Before the dregs they shall divine

Of the cup brimming o'er with wine—

Who the romance do not complete,

But who abandon it—as I

Have my Oneguine—suddenly.

[Note 86: The celebrated Persian poet. Pushkin uses the passage referred to as an epigraph to the "Fountain of Baktchiserai." It runs thus: "Many, even as I, visited that fountain, but some of these are dead and some have journeyed afar." Saadi was born in 1189 at Shiraz and was a reputed descendant from Ali, Mahomet's son-in-law. In his youth he was a soldier, was taken prisoner by the Crusaders and forced to work in the ditches of Tripoli, whence he was ransomed by a merchant whose daughter he subsequently married. He did not commence writing till an advanced age. His principal work is the "Gulistan," or "Rose Garden," a work which has been translated into almost every European tongue.]

End of Canto The Eighth

The End