No love in it at all, a mere caprice,
A young girl’s spring-tide dream.
Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare,
She’ll have a lover—something ready made,
Or improvised between two cups of tea—
A lover by imperial ukase!
Fate said the word—I chanced to be the man!
If that grenade the crazy student threw
Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar,
All this would not have happened. I’d have been a hero,