Apollon Maikov (1821–1897)

UPON this wild headland, crowned meanly with indigent rushes

And withering bush and the pitiful green of the pinetrees,

The aged Meniskos, a sorrowful fisherman laid

His son who had perished. His youth the sea, motherwise, nurtured,

That sea whose wide lap took him back, who resistlessly bore him

In death, and who carefully carried the young body shoreward.

Then mourning Meniskos went forth, and beneath the great willow

He dug him a grave, a plain stone he set for a mark on the cliff-side,

And hung overhead a coarse net he had woven of willow,—

A fisherman’s wreath to be poverty’s bitter memento.