THE KOBZAR OF THE UKRAINE
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Shechenko had actually spoken impertinently of the Autocrat in his poems. He refused to retract.
The government really wished to be lenient, if he would only be good and confess that he had done wrong. But Shevchenko was not of those who are willing to admit that black is white.
The gloomy autocracy now pronounces his doom—a sort of living death in Siberian barracks. The czar added to the sentence, with his own hand, the proviso that he should not be allowed either to write or to paint.
