Juliusz Slowacki Poems

Exiles came to the land of Siberia, and having chosen a broad site they built a
wooden house that they might dwell together in concord and
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Surging like a vast current of salmon or sheatfish,
Coiling up and down like an iron serpent
That rears now its torso, now its head,
The armed horsemen breast the prairie grass. --
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And lo, once on a time at night the Shaman waked Anhelli,
saying to him : 'Sleep not, but come with me,
for there are mighty matters in the wilderness.'
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And when they drew near to the burial ground Anhelli heard the hymn of the tombs,
complaining, as it were a complaint of the ashes to God.

But as soon as the groans arose,
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And the Shaman passed with Anhelli over the desert ways of Siberia,
where stood prisons.

And they beheld the countenances of some prisoners through the gratings,
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And lo, those exiles in the snowy tabernacle,
in the absence of the Shaman, had begun to quarrel among themselves,
and had divided into three groups ;
but each of these groups thought of the deliverance of the fatherland.
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And so the Shaman and Anhelli made their pilgrimage through the sorrowful country
and over the desolate roads and under the roaring forests of Siberia,
meeting men who suffered, and comforting them.
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When the Shaman had calmed the weeping of Anhelli,
he left the fishermen and set out into the wilderness.

And the moon was still high when they came to the hut of an aged man,
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And when the Shaman was about to go forth with Anhelli under the stars,
having comforted some of the prisoners,
he heard a great clanking in one of the corridors.
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The Shaman, when he had searched in the hearts of that multitude of exiles,
said to himself: 'Verily, I have not found here what I sought;
lo, their hearts are weak and they give themselves over to be conquered by grief.
...