O dreams! Where has your sweetness vanished?
And where has youth (glib rhyme) been banished?
Can it be true, it's bloom has passed,
Has withered, withered now at last?
Can it be true my heyday's ended-
All elegiac play aside-
That now indeed my spring has died
(As I in jest so oft pretended)?
And is there no return of youth?
Shall I be thirty soon, in truth?
And so life's afternoon has started,
As I must now admit, I see.
But let us then as friends be parted,
My sparkling youth, before you flee!
I thank you for your host of treasures,
For pain and grief as well as pleasures,
For storms and feasts and worldly noise,
For all your gifts and all your joys;
My thanks to you. With you I've tasted,
Amid the tumult and the still,
Life's essence...and enjoyed my fill.
Enough! Clear-souled and far from wasted,
I start upon an untrod way
To take my rest from yesterday
__
That's my favourite section from Eugene Onegin which I read this year, it's so good I immediately finished it then went back and read it all again. I had just turned 30 when I read it so this felt very apt
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