Oh in the East the sun climbs high
And sets again in the western sky.
In narrow cell in monkish gown
Tramps an old man up and down,
Then climbs the highest turret there
To feast his eyes on Kiev so fair.
And sitting on the parapet
He yields a while to fond regret.
Anon he goes to the woodland spring,
The belfry near, where sweet bells ring.
The cooling draught to his mind recalls
How hard was life without the walls.
Again the monk his cell floor paces
’Mid the silent walls his life retraces.
The sacred book he holds in hand
And loudly reads,
The old man’s mind to Cossack land
Swiftly speeds.
Now holy words do fade away,
The monkish cell turns Cossack den,
The glorious brotherhood lives again.
The gray old captain, like an owl
Peers beneath the monkish cowl.
Music, dances, the city’s calls,
Rattling fetters, Moscow’s walls,
O’er woods and snows
his eyes can see
The banks of distant Yenisee.
Upon his soul deep gloom has crept
And thus the monk in sadness wept.
Down, Down! Bow thy head;
On thy fleshly cravings tread.
In the sacred writings read
Read, read, to the bell give heed,
Thy heart too long has ruled thee,
All thy life it’s fooled thee.
Thy heart to exile led thee,
Now let it silent be.
As all things pass away,
So thou shalt pass away.
Thus may’st thou know thy lot,
Mankind remembers not.
Though groans the old man’s sadness tell.
Upon his book he quickly fell,
And tramped and tramped about his cell.
He sits again in mood forlorn
Wonders why he e’er was born.
One thing alone he fain would tell.
He loves his Ukraina well.
For Matins now
the great bell booms.
The aged monk
his cowl resumes.
For Ukraina now to pray
My good old Palee limps away.
Drowsy the waves and dim the sky,
Across the shore and far away,
Like drunken things the rushes sway
Without a wind. O God on high,
Is it decreed that longer yet
Within this lockless prison set,
Beside this sea that profits naught,
I am to languish? Answering not,
Like to a living thing, the grain
Sways mute and yellowing on the plain;
No tidings will it let me hear,
And none besides to give me ear.
See fires ablaze, hear music sound—
The music weeps and nestles round.
E’en as a diamond, precious, fair,
The eyes of youth are bright, how bright!
Gladness and hope have set their light
In joyous eyes. They know not care,
Those youthful eyes—no sin is there.
And all are filled with mirth and glee,
And all are dancing. I alone
Gaze, as there were a curse on me.
I weep, I weep to all unknown.
Why do I weep? Perchance to mourn,
How without hap, as tempest-borne,
The days of all my youth have flown.
Did you but know, fine dandy,
The people’s life of misery
You would not use such pretty phrases,
Nor give to God such empty praises.
At our tears you’re laughing,
And our sorrows chaffing,
Slave’s cot in a shady spot—
You call it heaven! Rot!
I lived once in such a shanty,
Of childhood’s tears I shed a plenty,
In bitter sorrows we were wise,
Home that you call paradise.
No paradise I call thee,
Little cottage in the wood,
With the water pure beside thee
Close by the village rude!
There my mother bore me,
Singing she tended me;
My child’s heart drank in her pain.
Cottage in the shady dell,
Heaven outside, inside hell;
But slavery there,
with labor weary,
Nor time for prayer
in life so dreary.
My mother good to her early grave
Was hurled by sorrows wave on wave.
The father weeping o’er his young,
(little and naked were we),
Sank ’neath the weight of fated wrong
And died in slavery.
The children, we, of home bereft
Like little mice ’mong neighbors crept.
Water drawer was I at school,
My brothers toiled ’neath landlord’s rule.
For my sisters an evil fate must be,
Though little doves they seemed to me;
Into life as serfs they’re born,
And die they must in that lot forlorn.
I shudder yet, where’er I roam,
When I think of life in that village home.
Evil-doers, Oh God, are we,
An earthly heaven we had from Thee,
Turned it into hell have we,
And a second heaven is now our plea.
Gently we live with our brothers now,
With their lives our fields we plough;
Fields that with their tears are wet,
And yet—
What do we know?
yet it seems as if Thou!
(For without Thy will
Should we suffer ill?)
Dost Thou, Oh Father in heaven holy
Laugh at us the poor and lowly?
Advise with them of noble birth
How so cleverly to rule the earth?
For see the woods their branches waving,
And there beyond, the white pool gleaming
And willows o’er the water bending,
Garden of Eden it is in sooth,
But of its deeds enquire the truth.
This wondrous earth should tell a story
Of endless joy, and praise, and glory
To Thee, Oh God, unique and holy.
Unhallowed spot,
Whence praise comes not!
A world of tears where curses rise,
To heaven above the hopeless skies.
The slave with sickle
reaped the wheat,
Then wearily limped
among the stooks;
But not to rest,
Her little son she sought
Who wakened crying
in cool nest
among the sheaves.
His swaddled limbs unwrapped
she nourished him,
Then, dandling him a moment
fell asleep.
In dreams she saw
her little son,
Her Johnny, grown to man,
handsome and rich.
No lonely bachelor
but a married man
In freedom it seemed,
no longer the landlord’s
but his own man.
And in their own joyous field
his wife and he
reaped their own wheat,
Their children brought their food.
The poor thing
laughed in her sleep,
Woke up—
a dream indeed it was.
She looked at Johnny,
picked him up and swaddled him,
And back to her allotted task;
Sixty stooks her stint.
Perhaps the last of the sixty it was:
God grant it.
And God grant
this dream of thine
may be fulfilled.
Thy youth is over; time has brought
Winter upon thee; hope is grown
Chill as the north wind; thou art old.
Sit thou in thy dark house alone;
With no man converse shalt thou hold,
With no man shalt take counsel;
