Motherland Poem by Emil Sharafutdinov

From Lermontov

I love my motherland but with strange love!
My reason can't defeat this sense.
Neither the glory bought with bloody strife,
Nor calmness full of proud confidence,
Nor cherished legends of the olden days
A pleasant dream in me can raise.
But I do love — for what, I do not know —
The chilly silence of her leas,
Her shoreless forests swaying in a breeze,
Her sea wide rivers when they overflow;
I love to journey in a cart along a country road
And, slowly gazing through the shade of night,
To meet at times, sighing for bed and board,
Shimmering lights in gloomy villages on either side.
I love the smoke of scorched stubble,
Benighted in a field a wagon train
And on a hill a wedded couple
Of birches white amid a yellow plain.
Or with delight unknown to others
I see sometimes a threshing-floor,
A window decked with carved shutters,
A peasant's cottage roofed with straw;
Till midnight in the festive evening
I will stay watching country folk's
Dance with stomping and whistling,
Accompanied with drunk men's talks.