In doubt, in fright
The horrid vision now I measured
With unbelieving gaze, my sight
Mistrusting.... ‘Thou! Art thou my treasured
Nahina? Speak!’ from me the cry
Burst forth. ‘Where is thy beauty? Wby
Have the gods changed thee so? Have I
Long, then, from life and love been parted?’
‘For forty years!’ I heard her say.
‘Indeed, I’m seventy to-day!...
But never mind! So are lives charted
And so they pass. Thy spring has flown
And mine has too. We are, I own,
Old, both, but be thou not disheartened
By fickle youth’s swift passage. True,
I’m grey, a trifle crooked too,
Less lively and perhaps less charming
Than once I was....’ This in disarming
Tones she declared, her voice a squeak.
‘Come, do not look, I beg, so tragic....
I am-in confidence I speak-
Like thee become well versed in magic.’
 
“A sorceress! What had she said!...
Struck dumb was I by the admission
And felt a fool, a dunderhead
For all my store of erudition.
 
“But worse by far was that the spell
That I had cast worked far too well.
My shrivelled idol flared with passion;
She loved me — loved me to obsession!
Her grey lips twisted in a smile,
In graveyard tones the old hag muttered
The wildest of avowals, while
I suffered silently, in utter
Disgust and loathing, and upon
The ground my eyes kept. She wheezed on,
And though, by fits of coughing shaken,
So was she with her subject taken,
She never stopped. ‘My poor heart is
For tender passion born and bliss,’
She croaked. ‘ ‘Tis love alone I covet
And hunger for. I flame, I bum....
O come to me, for thee I yearn;
I’m dying, dying, my beloved!’
 
“ ‘Twas lustfully that she, Ruslan,
Was ogling me. Her bony fingers
Caught greedily at my caftan....
There to remain, knight, there to linger
Beside her was sheer agony;
I squeezed my eyes shut, for, you see,
I could not bear it any longer,
And broke away.... ‘Knave! Thus to wrong me!’
She yelped. ‘A pure maid’s life-quite shattered!
Such villainy! For shame! For shame!
As if my love so little mattered!
Alas! I am myself to blame;
You men, I vow, are all the same.
By thy seduction helpless rendered,
To passion wholly I surrendered....
Deceiver! Blackguard! Thou shalt know
Wbat vengeance is, just wait!...’
 
“ ‘Twas so
We parted. In these forests buried
E’er since, a hermit’s solitary
Life have I led, and of the balm
Of nature tasted, by its calm
And wisdom doctored. I’ll not tarry
Long here on earth.... To you alone
Do I impart this; know: the crone
Has not forgot her unrequited,
Scorned passion. In her soul, her blighted
And ugly soul, love’s changed to spite;
And that she’ll come to hate you, knight
As she does me, you can be sure.
But be not, I entreat you, frighted:
Griefs bound to pass, ‘twill not endure.
 
The old man’s story hungrily
Our knight took in.