Faithful Don!  There also greet thee
   Thy true warriors bold and free—­
Let thy vineyard’s foaming bubbles
   In the glass be spilled to thee!

Pushkin.

The valley of the Don is the home of the Russian Cossack.

THE CAUCAS

The Caucas lies before my feet!  I stand where
   Glaciers gleam, beside a precipice rock-ribbed;
An eagle that has soared from off some distant cliff,
Lawless as I, sweeps through the radiant air! 
Here I see streams at their sources up-welling,
The grim avalanches unrolling and swelling!

The soft cloudy convoys are stretched forth below,
Tattered by thronging mad torrents descending;
Beneath them the naked rocks downward are bending,
Still deeper, the wild shrubs and sparse herbage grow;
But yonder the forests stand verdant in flora
And birds are a’twitter in choiring chorus.

Yonder, cliff-nested-are dwellings of mortals,
There pasture the lambs in sweet blossoming meadows—­
There couch the herds in the cool deepening shadows—­
There roar the Aragua’s blue sparkling waters,
And lurketh the bandit safe hid in lone caverns,
Where Terek, wild sporting, is cutting the azure!

It leaps and it howls like some ravening beast
At first sight of feeding, through grating of iron—­
It roars on the shore with a furious purring,
It licks on the pebbles with eagerest greed. 
Vain struggle and rancor and hatred, alas! 
’Tis enchained and subdued by the unheeding mass.

Pushkin.

THE CLOISTER ON KASBEK

Kasbek, thy regal canopy
    High o’er all peaks revealed I see
By an eternal icy glare. 
Hanging in cloudless glory ever—­
Like to an ark thy cloister there;
This world disturbing thy peace never,
Blest realm of joy remote in air! 
Ah could I at thy mercy’s threshold,
From durance cursed set myself free,
And in thine own etherial cloisters
Near thy Creator ever be!

Pushkin.

GOBLINS OP THE STEPPES

Stormy clouds delirious straying,
Showers of whirling snowflakes white,
And the pallid moonbeams waning—­
Sad the heavens, sad the night! 
Further speeds the sledge, and further,
Loud the sleighbell’s melody,
Grewsome, frightful ’tis becoming,
’Mid these snow fields now to be!

Hasten!  “That is useless, Master,
Heavier for my team their load,
And my eyes with snow o’er plastered
Can no longer see the road! 
Lost all trace of our direction,
Sir, what now?  The goblins draw
Us already round in circles,
Pull the sledge with evil claw!

See!  One hops with frantic gesture,
In my face to grin and hiss,
See!  It goads the frenzied horses
Onward to the black abyss! 
In the darkness, like a paling
One stands forth,—­and now I see
Him like walking-fire sparkling—­
Then the blackness,—­woe is me!”