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
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