Fyodor Sologub (Pseudonym of Fyodor Teternikov) (b. 1863)

AUSTERE the music of my songs:

The echo of sad utterance fills them,

A bitter breath, far-wafted, chills them;

And is my back not bent to thongs?

The mists of day on darkness fall;

The vainly promised land I follow

Upon a road the shadows swallow;

The world rears round me like a wall.

At times from that far land the vain

Faint voice will sound like distant thunder.

Can long abeyance of a wonder

Obliterate the long bleak pain?