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Translated by C. T. Brooks
BY the Don my mother she bore me | |
| Mid mountains of ice and snow; | |
| Yet with cold I never was frozen, | |
| For my breast is always aglow. | |
| So, my good steed bestriding, | 5 |
| Through the lands I come riding, | |
| So far from the gates of Moscow | |
| That where I am I don’t know. | |
| |
| I sate upon my threshold, | |
| And none so happy as I; | 10 |
| I caught fresh fish for my table | |
| From the stream that went rushing by; | |
| I shot at the weasel, | |
| The fox and the sable, | |
| And made of the skin a garment, | 15 |
| When winter, grim winter, drew nigh. | |
| |
| There came from Alexander | |
| A call to me one night: | |
| “Up, Cossacks, shoulder to shoulder! | |
| There ’s other game in sight! | 20 |
| Fierce beasts and devouring | |
| Our purlieus are scouring, | |
| A blood-spotted panther among them; | |
| Up, up to the chase, to the fight!” | |
| |
| My steed, he pricked his ears up, | 25 |
| For the call I gave was not low; | |
| He came; without spur or saddle, | |
| I mounted mid ice and snow; | |
| His bare back bestriding, | |
| Through the lands I come riding, | 30 |
| So far from the gates of Moscow | |
| That where I am I don’t know. | |
| |
| And now I have driven the foemen, | |
| All that live, from my Emperor’s lands; | |
| And they that remained in the country | 35 |
| Are all now in very good hands. | |
| We found ourselves hurried— | |
| In the snow they lie buried— | |
| In the spring, when the snow-drifts are melted, | |
| We ’ll bury them under the sands. | 40 |
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| Now tell me, thou German, I pray thee, | |
| How much longer and farther I ride, | |
| Till I come to the end of my journey, | |
| To the land where the foemen abide? | |
| What day and what hour | 45 |
| Through France shall I scour, | |
| And strangle the brood of the Serpent | |
| In the pestilent hole where they hide? | |
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| A terrible comrade comes riding | |
| Along with me; well do ye know | 50 |
| His might,—ye have felt his keen arrows, | |
| Ice-pointed and feathered with snow. | |
| His name,—it is Winter; | |
| Your lances he ’ll splinter; | |
| He rides on a cloudy-white charger, | 55 |
| And follows wherever I go. | |
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| He rides like the whirlwind behind you, | |
| With an icy-cold pike in his hand, | |
| And in front he comes, scattering, to blind you, | |
| The snow in your faces like sand; | 60 |
| The rivers he bridges | |
| With icy-backed ridges, | |
| That he and I may find you, | |
| Ye Frenchmen, at home in your land! | |
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| I have not yet forgotten | 65 |
| The lesson ye bade me learn,— | |
| The home of peace and comfort | |
| Into fire and smoke to turn. | |
| Barns, houses, have ye, too, | |
| ’T were well ye should see to, | 70 |
| For I, when I will, have torches | |
| Your homes and your garners to burn. | |
| |
| And if I take vengeance, who blames me? | |
| But Alexander says right: | |
| “You and the cold are no strangers, | 75 |
| Nor need ye the firebrand’s light. | |
| The snow-pillow fleecy | |
| Your slumber makes easy; | |
| Your tent is the awning of heaven, | |
| The stars are your candles by night. | 80 |
| |
| “Wild stories of northern barbarians | |
| They tell in this southerly land, | |
| Who bring with them nothing but murder | |
| And plunder and blackness and brand. | |
| Now, then, Cossacks, go ye, | 85 |
| To silence them, show ye | |
| What you from the north bring with you, | |
| From Him whom no might can withstand!” | |
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