'SLEEP
'A long while I had not been in my own land.. . .
But I found in it no change to notice—
Everywhere the same deathlike, senseless stagnation,
Houses without roofs, walls tumbling down,
And the same filth and stench and poverty and boredom!
And the same slavish glance, now insolent, now abject!
Our people were made free; and the free arm
Hangs as before like a whip unused.
All, all is as before.. . . And in one thing alone
Europe, Asia, the whole world we have outstripped!
No! never yet have my dear countrymen
Sunk into a sleep so terrible!
'Everything is asleep; everywhere, in village and in town,
In cart, in sledge, by day, by night, sitting and standing. . .
The merchant, the official sleeps; the sentinel at his post
Stands asleep in the cold of the snow and in the burning heat!
And the prisoner sleeps; and the judge snores;
Dead asleep are the peasants; asleep, they reap and plough;
They thresh asleep; the father sleeps, the mother and children
All are asleep! He that flogs is asleep, and he too that is flogged!
Only the Tsar's gin-shop never closes an eye;
And grasping tight her pot of gin,
Her brow on the Pole and her heels on the Caucasus,
Lies in interminable sleep our country, holy Russia!
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