| Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921. | | | | The Surf | | By Yurgis Baltrushaitis (b. 1873) |
| | | THE DAY’S wild ocean sings and thunders, | |
| And beats against the fatal shore, | |
| This breaker with dumb sorrow sunders, | |
| And these like laughing victors roar, | |
| Their sheen—the joy of vernal wonders, | 5 |
| Their sheen—vast winter’s shining hoar. | |
| |
| In wrath triumphant forward-swinging, | |
| The lifted billow calls, and fails, | |
| A joyous giant, shouting, singing, | |
| Its voice the voice of sounding gales, | 10 |
| Its glory in the sunlight flinging | |
| Whose noonday glow it holds and hails. | |
| |
| Across the sea, now lightly foaming, | |
| Another rears, that stirs the deep, | |
| And floods the shore with silence, gloaming; | 15 |
| Morose and slow it seems to creep | |
| Like one who drops, worn out with roaming, | |
| From his bent back a fatal heap. | |
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| Each moment new, with changing power, | |
| The surf is thundering, alone. | 20 |
| Now idle, now it seems to lower, | |
| Hymning a Silence all unknown, | |
| Like a dark heart asleep,—for hour | |
| On hour in restless monotone. | | | | |
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