Eugene Onegin

One lovely, yet hard to get into, piece is the Russian verse novel/epic poem Eugene Onegin [Евге́ний Оне́гин] by Pushkin [publ. 1825]. Read it all here. There is also a film of it with Liv Tyler. It's a romantic story of love dismissed and then yearned for--of how time can change your mind, but you find it is too late, and you cannot go back and have what was previously offered.

Here's an excerpt--what lovely last lines in this stanza, they remind me of Keats:

[...]

XVIL

My goddesses, where are your shades?
Do ye not hear my mournful sighs?
Are ye replaced by other maids
Who cannot conjure former joys?
Shall I your chorus hear anew,
Russia's Terpsichore review
Again in her ethereal dance?
Or will my melancholy glance
On the dull stage find all things changed,
The disenchanted glass direct
Where I can no more recollect?—
A careless looker-on estranged
In silence shall I sit and yawn
And dream of life's delightful dawn?

[...]

And here are the last lines, which have a moving yet mysterious touch to them:

L

[...]

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.