NEKRASOV, Nikolay

Morning

You're unhappy, sick at heart:

Oh, I know it-here such sickness isn't rare.

Nature can but mirror

The surrounding poverty.

All is ever drear and dismal,

Pastures, fields, and meadows,

Wet and drowsy jackdaws

Resting on the peaked haystacks;

Here's a drunken peasant driving

His collapsing nag

Into far-off blueish mists,

Such a gloomy sky . . . It makes one weep!

The rich city is no better, though:

The same storm clouds race across the sky;

It's hard on the nerves-steel shovels

Scraping, screeching as they clean the streets

Work's beginning everywhere;

From the fire tower an alarm goes up;

A condemned man's brought outside

Where the executioners already wait.

At the break of day a prostitute is hurrying

Home from someone's bed;

Officers inside a hired carriage

Leave the city-there will be a duel.

Shopkeepers have roused themselves

And they rush to sit behind their counters:

All day long they need to swindle

If they want to eat their fill at night.

Listen! Cannon fire from the fortress!

There's a flood endangering the capital . . .

Someone's died: Upon a scarlet cushion

Lies a first-class Anna decoration.

Now a yardman beats a thief-he got him!

Geese are driven out to slaughter;

From an upper floor the crackle

Of a shot-another suicide. .

The Songs Of Siberian Exiles

We stand unbroken in our places,

Our shovels dare to take no rest,

For not in vain his golden treasure

God buried deep in earth's dark breast.

Then shovel on and do not falter,

Humble and hopeful, clear we see--

When Russia has grown rich and mighty,

Our grandchildren will grateful be!

----------------------

Though streams the sweat in rivers downward,

Our arms from shoveling grown weak,

Our bodies frozen to an ice crust

While we new strength in slumber seek--

Sweating or freezing, we will bear it!

Thirst-pain and hunger will withstand,

For each stone is of use to Russia,

And each is given by our own hand!

In War

Hearing the terrors of the war, sore troubled,

By each new victim of the combat torn--

Nor friend, nor wife I give my utmost pity,

Nor do I for the fallen hero mourn.

Alas! the wife will find a consolation.

The friend by friend is soon forgot in turn.

But somewhere is the one soul that remembers--

That will remember unto death's dark shore,

Nor can the tears of a heart-stricken mother

Forget the sons gone down on fields of gore.

One soul there is that like the weeping willow

Can never raise its drooping branches more.

When from out of error’s darkness

When from out of error’s darkness

With a word both sure and ardent

I had drawn the fallen soul,

And you, filled with deepest torment,

Cursed the vice that had ensnared you

And so doing wrung your hands;

When, punishing with recollection

Forgetful conscience, you then told

The tale of all that went before me,

And suddenly you hid your face

In trembling hands and, filled with horror,

Filled with shame, dissolved in tears,

Indignant as you were, and shaken

…..