RUSSIAN PEASANT CHILDREN
NEKRASOV
Again I’m in the country, once again!
I hunt, write verses, and am free from care.
Yesterday, tired with tramping through the swamps,
I strayed into the barn and slumbered there.
When I awakened, through the barn’s wide cracks
The beams of a rejoicing sun shone in.
A dove is cooing; flying o’er the roof,
I hear the young rooks caw, with joyous din.
Another bird is flitting through the air;
I know it by its shadow for a crow.
Hark! there is whispering! All along a crack
Attentive eyes are gazing, in a row.
As flowers grow all commingled in the fields,
Were mingled eyes of gray, of brown, of blue.
How full they were of freedom and repose,
Of soft caressing, and of goodness, too!
The look in a child’s eyes I always know,
And dearly love.—Thought faded from my brain;
A sense of something holy filled my soul.
Hush, listen! There is whispering again!
32
