SONGS OF RUSSIA
“Say, did graves give you birth, and do you leave
No parents and no wife behind to weep—
No child who will lament when you are lost
In these abysses terrible and deep?
“Do you leave no one to feel grief for you,
To long for you, shed tears in sorrow sore,
When the vast watery graveyard covers you
And you unto the earth return no more?
“Have you no country and no fatherland,
No friendly house, no home to which to go,
That you have such contempt for life, and wait
For the dark grave without a sign of woe?
“No one in heaven have you on whom to call
From trouble’s depths, no God to whom to cry?
Have you no nation, say, have you no faith?
Ye wretched ones, what is your destiny?”
Yawns the abyss, and loud the billows roar;
Creaks the ship’s rigging as the blast sweeps by;
The tempest howls, and wildly pipe the winds;
And thus, at last, with tears one makes reply:
“The graveyard dark was not our mother, nay,
Nor was the grave our cradle-bed of old.
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