The university poem by Vladimir Nabokov, translated by Dmitri Nabokov.

So then you're Russian. It's the first time I've met a Russian.

And the lively, delicately bulging eyes examine me.

You take your tea with lemon, I already know.

"'I also know that you have icons where you live, and some of ours.

"'A pretty girl, a British glow spreads across her tender skin.

"'She laughs, she speaks at a quick clip.

"'Frankly, our town is dullish, though the river's charming, do you row? Big girl with

sloping shoulders, hands that are large, bereft of rings. Thus, at the vicar's, over tea,

brand-new acquaintances, we chat, and I endeavour to be droll. In troubling, dulcet worry lost at the legs that she has crossed and at her vivid lips I peer,

then, once again, I quickly shift my cheeky gaze. She, as expected, has come with aunt, although the latter is busy with her left-wing patter,

and contradicting her the vicar, a timid man, large Adam's apple, with a brown-eyed canine squint, chokes upon a nervous cough.

Tea stronger than a Munich beer.

In the room the air is hazy.

In the hearth a flamlet lazy gleams like a butterfly on boulders.

I've overstayed. It's time to go now. I rise, a nod,

and then another. I say goodbye without hand-thrusting, for so demands the local custom. I hurry down a

step and out into a February day. Out of the heavens without a lull descends a ceaseless, two-week flow.

"'Isn't it true how very dull an ancient student-town can grow?

"'The houses, each more commonly than the next,

"'whose ancient rosiness gains cheer from bicycles reposing near,

"'the college gates by which the bishop stands stonily inside his niche, and higher there is a

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