The clock of doom had struck as fated; the poet, without a sound, let fall his pistol on the ground. - Alexander Pushkin

From an evil dog be glad of a handful of hairs.

Sauvage, sad, silent,
as timid as the sylvan doe,
in her own family
she seemed a strangeling.

O flowers, country, love, inaction,
O fields! I am your devotee!
I always note with satisfaction
Onegin’s difference from me,
Lest somewhere a sarcastic reader
Or publisher or such-like breeder
Of complicated calumny
Discerns my physiognomy
And shamelessly repeats the fable
That I have crudely versified
Myself like Byron, bard of pride,
As if we were no longer able
To write a poem and discuss
A subject not concerning us.