With sadness I survey our present generation!
Their future seems so empty, dark, and cold,
Weighed down beneath a load of knowing hesitation,
...
I love my native land with such perverse affection!
My better judgement has no standing here.
Not glory, won in bloody action,
...
Sailless and without a rudder,
On the ocean of the air--
Float the choirs of stars harmonious,
'Mid the mists eternal there;
...
Clouds in the skies above, heavenly wanderers,
Long strings of snowy pearls stretched over azure plains!
...
By gates of an abode, blessed,
A man stood, asking for donation,
A beggar, cruelly oppressed
By hunger, thirst and deprivation.
...
Slumber sweet, my fairest baby,
Slumber calmly, sleep—
Peaceful moonbeams light thy chamber,
In thy cradle creep;
...
No, I'm not Byron; I am, yet,
Another choice for the sacred dole,
Like him - a persecuted soul,
But only of the Russian set.
...
At life's most testing moment, when
the grieving heart's replete,
a prayer that is most potent then
I call up and repeat.
...
Forever you, the unwashed Russia!
The land of slaves, the land of lords:
And you, the blue-uniformed ushers,
...
In high noon's heat in a Caucasian valley
I lay quite still, a bullet in my breast;
The smoke still rose from my deep wound,
As drop by drop my blood flowed out.
...