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Translated by Mrs. D. Ogilvie
STONY-BROWED Dwina, thy face is as flint! | |
| Horsemen and wagons cross, scoring no dint; | |
| Cossacks patrol thee, and leave thee as hard; | |
| Camp-fires but blacken and spot thee, like pard; | |
| For the dead, silent river lies rigid and still. | 5 |
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| Down on thy sedgy banks picket the troops, | |
| Scaring the night-wolves with carols and whoops; | |
| Crackle their fagots of driftwood and hay, | |
| And the steam of their pots fills the nostrils of day; | |
| But the dead, silent river lies rigid and still. | 10 |
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| Sledges pass sliding from hamlet to town: | |
| Lovers and comrades,—and none doth he drown! | |
| Harness-bells tinkling in musical glee, | |
| For to none comes the sorrow that came unto me, | |
| And the dead, silent river lies rigid and still. | 15 |
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| I go to the Dwina; I stand on his wave, | |
| Where Iran, my dead, has no grass on his grave, | |
| Stronger than granite that coffins a Czar, | |
| Solid as pavement, and polished as spar,— | |
| Where the dead, silent river lies rigid and still. | 20 |
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| Stronger than granite? Nay, falser than sand! | |
| Fatal the clasp of thy slippery hand; | |
| Cruel as vulture’s the clutch of thy claws; | |
| Who shall redeem from the merciless jaws | |
| Of the dead, silent river, so rigid and still? | 25 |
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| Crisp lay the new-fallen snow on thy breast; | |
| Trembled the white moon through haze in the west; | |
| Far in the thicket the wolf-cub was howling, | |
| Down by the sheep-cotes the wolf-dam was prowling; | |
| And the dead, silent river lay rigid and still. | 30 |
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| When Iran, my lover, my husband, my lord, | |
| Lightly and cheerily slept on the sward,— | |
| Light with his hopes of the morrow and me, | |
| That the reeds on the margin leaned after to see; | |
| But the dead, silent river lay rigid and still. | 35 |
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| O’er the fresh snowfall, the winter-long frost, | |
| O’er the broad Dwina, the forester crost; | |
| Snares at his girdle, and gun at his side, | |
| Game-bag weighed heavy with gifts for his bride: | |
| And the dead, silent river lay rigid and still. | 40 |
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| Rigid and silent, and crouching for prey, | |
| Crouching for him who went singing his way. | |
| Oxen were stabled, and sheep were in fold; | |
| But Iran was struggling in torrents ice-cold, | |
| ’Neath the dead, silent river, so rigid and still. | 45 |
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| Home he came never. We searched by the ford | |
| Small was the fissure that swallowed my lord; | |
| Glassy ice-sheetings had frozen above,— | |
| A crystalline cover to seal up my love | |
| In the dead, silent river, so rigid and still. | 50 |
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| Still by the Dwina my home-torches burn; | |
| Faithful I watch for my bridegroom’s return | |
| When the moon sparkles on hoar-frost and tree | |
| I see my love crossing the Dwina to me | |
| O’er the dead, silent river, so rigid and still. | 55 |
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| Always approaching, he never arrives, | |
| Howls the northeast wind, the dusty snow drives. | |
| Snapping like touchwood I hear the ice crack, | |
| And my lover is drowned in the water-hole black, | |
| ’Neath the dead, silent river, so rigid and still. | 60 |
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