“Gay should be thy mood, O Mother,
     As the sturgeons leap in glee: 
   Ocean’s merging still is distant,
     Shouldest thou be sad, like me?

  “Are thy spume-drifts tears, O Mother,
     Tears for those that are no more? 
   Dost thou haste to pass by, weeping,
     This thine own beloved shore?”

   Then uprose on high Araxes,
     Flung in air her spumy wave,
   And from out her depths maternal
     Sonorous her answer gave: 

  “Why disturb me now, presumptuous,
     All my slumbering woe to wake? 
   Why invade the eternal silence
     For a foolish question’s sake?

  “Know’st thou not that I am widowed;
     Sons and daughters, consort, dead? 
   Wouldst thou have me go rejoicing,
     As a bride to nuptial bed?

  “Wouldst thou have me decked in splendor,
     To rejoice a stranger’s sight,
   While the aliens that haunt me
     Bring me loathing, not delight?

  “Traitress never I; Armenia
     Claims me ever as her own;
   Since her mighty doom hath fallen
     Never stranger have I known.

  “Yet the glories of my nuptials
     Heavy lie upon my soul;
   Once again I see the splendor
     And I hear the music roll.

  “Hear again the cries of children
     Ringing joyfully on my banks,
  And the noise of marts and toilers,
    And the tread of serried ranks.

  “But where, now, are all my people? 
    Far in exile, homeless, lorn. 
  While in widow’s weeds and hopeless,
    Weeping, sit I here and mourn.

  “Hear now! while my sons are absent
    Age-long fast I still shall keep;
  Till my children gain deliverance,
    Here I watch and pray and weep.”

  Silent, then, the mighty Mother
    Let her swelling tides go free. 
  And in mournful meditation
    Slowly wandered to the sea.

Raphael PATKANIAN.

* * * * *

THE ARMENIAN MAIDEN

  In the hush of the spring night dreaming
    The crescent moon have you seen,
  As it shimmers on apricots gleaming,
    Through velvety masses of green.

  Have you seen, in a June-tide nooning,
    A languorous full-blown rose
  In the arms of the lilies swooning
    And yielding her sweets to her foes?

  Yet the moon in its course and the roses
    By Armenia’s maiden pale,
  When she coyly and slowly discloses
    The glories beneath her veil.

  And a lute from her mother receiving,
    With a blush that a miser would move,
  She treads a soft measure, believing
    That music is sister to love.

  Like a sapling her form in its swaying,
    Full of slender and lissomy grace
  As she bends to the time of her playing,
    Or glides with a fairy-light pace.