THE SPIRES of Moscow glittering from afar | |
| In the pale lustre of yon silver star, | |
| Her steel-clad bastions, and embattled walls, | |
| Her domes, her fanes, and gold-bespangled halls, | |
| No more the minstrel’s midnight music hear, | 5 |
| No vocal strains her silent gardens cheer:— | |
| Save where yon holy quire, in pure array, | |
| Through the gray portal treads its lonely way: | |
| They with soft notes, that sigh upon the gale, | |
| Wake the sad echoes of the sleeping vale; | 10 |
| Breathing, fair city, in a dirge to thee, | |
| Their sweetest, calmest, holiest melody; | |
| And cast, as o’er the mountain’s brow they wind, | |
| A mournful glance, a long last look behind. | |
| ’T is past forever,—see! aloft they fly, | 15 |
| Yon smoldering flakes upfloating to the sky— | |
| Till the moon fades beneath the lurid stream, | |
| Blotted from heaven, or shoots a ghastly beam. | |
| As some fond mourner, with averted eyes, | |
| Kindles the pile on which a parent lies, | 20 |
| Thy children, Moscow, rear thy funeral pyre, | |
| Plant the red torch, and fan the pious fire. | |
| For wilt thou, wilt thou thy destroyer greet, | |
| Drest with the garlands of thy own defeat; | |
| Or bid thy vaulted domes with loud acclaim | 25 |
| Attune their echoes to a tyrant’s name; | |
| Or see by feet unblest thy temples trod, | |
| And blood-red eagles waved above the shrine of God? | |
| Thou wilt not! Therefore with glad eyes I see | |
| The golden flame,—the flame that sets thee free! | 30 |
| Thy fretted aisles, thy burnished columns, bow; | |
| Rejoice, rejoice! thou art triumphant now. | |
| There, there! from street to street with dreary roar | |
| Their yellow tide the rampant billows pour, | |
| And, whirled by winds that sweep tempestuous by, | 35 |
| Point their red spires, and sail along the sky. | |
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