Poetry

at midnight hour
In Dnieper’s flood she bathed;
And bathing, she murmured
Over little me:

“Swim, swim, little maid,
Adown the Dnieper water,
You’ll swim out a fairy
Next midnight, my daughter.
I go to dance with him,
My faithless lover;
You’ll come and lure him
Into the river.
No more shall he laugh at me,
At my tears out-flowing,
But o’er him the Dnieper
Its blue water is rolling.
Swim out, my only one,
He will come to dance with thee.
Waves, waves, little waves,
Greet ye the water fairy.”

Sadly she cried and ran away,
As I floated down the stream.
But sister fairies met me,
I grew as in a dream.
A week, and I dance at midnight,
And watch from the water pools.
What does my sinful mother?
Lives she still in shameful pleasure,
With him, the faithless lord?
Thus the fairy whispered,
Then like diving bird she dropped
Back in the stream,
And the willows bowed above her.

The mother comes to walk by the river side.
’Tis weary in the palace,
And the lord is not at home.
She comes to the bank, thinks of her little one
Whom she plunged in with muttered charms.
What matters it? She would go back to the palace,
But no, hers is another fate.
She noticed not how the river maidens hastened
Till they caught her, and tickled her ’mid laughter.
Joyfully they caught her, and played and tickled her,
And put her in a basket net
(Unto her death).
And then they roared and laughed;
But one little fairy did not laugh.

Lyric12

Only friend, clear evening twilight,
Come and talk to me!
Cross the hills to share my prison
Very secretly.
Tell me how the sun in splendour
Sets behind the hill;
How the Dnieper lasses carry
Pitchers down to fill;
How the broad-leaved sycamore
Flings his branches wide;
How the willow kneels to pray
By the river-side;
How her green boughs kiss the water
Trailing, half asleep,
And unchristened ghosts of babies
Swing from them and weep;
How lost souls at lonely cross-roads
Cower, wild and dumb,
When the owl shrieks from the alder
Of the wrath to come;
How the magic flowers open
At the moonbeam’s touch.⁠ ⁠…
But of men, what would you tell me⁠—
Me, who know so much?
Far too much! And you know nothing;
Why, you understand
Nothing of what men are doing
Now, in my dear land.
But I know, and I will tell you,
Tell you, without end.⁠ ⁠…
When you speak with God tomorrow,
Look you tell Him, friend.

The Reaper13

Through the fields the reaper goes
Piling sheaves on sheaves in rows;
Hills, not sheaves, are these.
Where he passes howls the earth,
Howl the echoing seas.

All the night the reaper reaps,
Never stays his hands nor sleeps,
Reaping endlessly;
Whets his blade and passes on.⁠ ⁠…
Hush, and let him be.

Hush, he cares not how men writhe
With naked hands against the scythe.
Wouldst thou hide in field or town?
Where thou art, there he will come;
He will reap thee down.

Serf and landlord, great and small;
Friendless wandering singer⁠—all,
All shall swell the sheaves that grow
To mountains; even the Tsar shall go.14

And me too the scythe shall find
Cowering alone behind
Bars of iron; swift and blind,
Strike, and pass, and leave me, stark
And forgotten in the dark.

Lyric15

I care not, shall I see my dear
Own land before I die, or no,
Nor who forgets me, buried here
In desert wastes of alien snow;
Though all forget me⁠—better so.

A slave from my first bitter years,
Most surely I shall die a slave
Ungraced of any kinsmen’s tears;
And carry with me to my grave
Everything; and leave no trace,
No little mark to keep my place
In the dear lost Ukraina
Which is not ours, though our land.
And none shall ever understand;
No father to his son shall say:
—Kneel down, and fold your hands, and pray;
He died for our Ukraina.

I care no longer if the child
Shall pray for me, or pass me by.
One only thing I cannot bear:
To know my land, that was beguiled
Into a death-trap with a lie,
Trampled and ruined and defiled⁠ ⁠…
Ah, but I care, dear God; I care!

A Dream16

Oh my lofty hills⁠—
Yet not so lofty
But beautiful ye are.
Sky-blue in the distance;
Older than old Pereyaslav,
Or the tombs of Vebla,
Like those clouds that rest
Beyond the Dnieper.

I walk with quiet step,
And watch the wonders peeping out.
Out of the clouds march silently
Scarped cliff and bush and solitary tree;
White cottages creep forth
Like children in white garments,
Playing in the valley’s gloom.
And far below our gray old Cossack,
The Dnieper, sings musically
Amid the woods.
And then beyond the Dnieper on the hillside,
The little Cossack church
Stands like a chapel,
With its leaning cross.

Long it stands there, gazing, waiting,
For the Cossacks from the Delta;
To the Dnieper prattles,
Telling all its woe
From its green-stained windows,
Like eyes of the dead,
It peeps as from the tomb.
Dost thou look for restoration?
Expect not such glory.
Robbed are thy people.
For what care the wicked lords
For the ancient Cossack fame?

And Traktemir above the hill
Scatters its wretched houses
Like a drunken beggar’s bags.
And there is old Manaster
Once a Cossack town.
Is that the one that used to be?
All, all is gone, as a playground for the kings
The land of the Zaporogues and the village
All, all the greedy ones have taken.
And you hills, you permitted it!
May no one look on you more
Cursed ones!⁠—No! No!
Not you I curse,
But our quarreling generals,
And the inhuman Poles.

Forgive me, my lofty ones,
Lofty ones and blue,
Finest in the world, and holiest,
Forgive me, I pray God.
For so I love my poor Ukraina,
I might blaspheme the holy God,
And for her lose my soul.
On a curve of lofty Traktemir
A lonely cottage like an orphan stands,
Ready to plunge from off the height
To loved Dnieper, far below.
From that house Ukraina is seen,
And all the land of the Hetmans.
Beside the house an old gray father sits.
Beyond the river the sun goes down
As he sits, and looks, and sadly thinks.
“Alas, Alas!” the old man cries,
“Fools, that lost this land of God,
The Hetmans’ land.”
His brow with thought is clouded,
Something bitter he would have said
But did not.

“Much have I wandered in the world,
In peasant’s coat and garb of lord.
How is it beyond the Ural,
Among the Kirghiz, Tartars?
Good God, even there it