C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Caucasus

Translation of Thomas Budd Shaw

BENEATH me the peaks of the Caucasus lie;

My gaze from the snow-bordered cliff I am bending;

From her sun-lighted eyrie the eagle ascending

Floats movelessly on in a line with mine eye.

I see the young torrent’s first leaps towards the ocean,

And the cliff-cradled lawine essay its first motion.

Beneath me the clouds in their silentness go,

The cataracts through them in thunder down-dashing,

Far beneath them bare peaks in the sunny ray flashing;

Weak moss and dry shrubs I can mark yet below,

Dark thickets still lower; green meadows are blooming

Where the throstle is singing and reindeer are roaming.

Here man, too, has nested his hut, and the flocks

On the long grassy slopes in their quiet are feeding,

And down to the valley the shepherd is speeding,

Where Arágva gleams out from her wood-crested rocks.

And there in his crags the poor robber is hiding,

And Térek in anger is wrestling and chiding.

Like a fierce young wild beast, how he bellows and raves,

Like that beast from his cage when his prey he espieth;

’Gainst the bank, like a wrestler, he struggleth and plieth,

And licks at the rocks with his ravening waves.

In vain, thou wild river! dumb cliffs are around thee,

And sternly and grimly their bondage hath bound thee!