Chapter III

To the very limit
has our country come,
Her own children
crucify her
worse than the Poles.
How like beer
they draw off
her righteous blood.
They would, you see
enlighten the maternal eyes
with everlasting fires;
Lead on the poor blind cripple
after the spirit of the age,
German fashion!
Fine, go ahead,
show us the way!
Let the old mother learn
how to look after such children
Show away!
For this instruction,
Don’t worry—
Good motherly reward will be.
The illusion fades
from your greedy eyes
Glory shall you see,
such glory as fits
the sons of deceitful sires.

To study then, my brothers,
Think and read,
Learn from the foreigner
Despise not your own.
Who forgets his mother
Him God will punish.
Foreigners will despise him
Nor admit him to their homes;
His children shall as strangers be
Nor shall he find happiness on earth.
I weep when I remember
the deeds of our fathers,
deeds I can not forget.
Heavy on my heart they lie;
Half my life I’d give
could I forget them.
Such is our glory
the glory of Ukraine.
So read then
that ye may see
Not in dream
but in vision
All the wrongs that lie
beneath yon mighty tombs.
Ask then of the martyrs
by whom, when and for what
were they crucified.
Embrace then
brothers mine—
The least of your brethren.
That your mother may smile again,
Smile through her tears.
Give blessings to your children
with hard toiler’s hands;
With free lips kiss them
when they are washed and clad.
Forget the shameful past
And the true glory shall live again,
the glory of the Ukraine.
And clear light of day
not twilight gloom
Shall gently shine.
Love one another, my brothers,
I pray you—I plead.

FREEDOM AND FRIENDS

With his new freedom Shevchenko finds himself in a different world. Not only does he meet the most brilliant people of the Russian Capital—scientists, artists, generals, nobles are his intimates. Count Tolstoi and Prince and Princess Repnin are his patrons.

He is introduced, too, in Russian or Polish translations to the great authors of other lands and times,—Greece and Rome, Germany and Britain offer him their treasures.

To us it is interesting to know that Byron, Walter Scott, and Shakespeare profoundly influenced him.

But a conflict of spirit now faces him. His worldly interests and his judgment advise him to go on with his painting. But strange music seems to ring in his ears. It is the music of his beautiful and suffering Ukraine. Songs seem to come to him from the wind and he writes them down.

They are in the peasant language of the Ukraine.

His ‘Kobzar’ appears in its first edition, with eight poems, in 1840. It is like a lightning flash through Russia.

Great Russian critics sneered at it, saying it was in the language of the swineherds. But the whole Ukraine recognized it as the voice of their suppressed nation. The down-trodden masses of all Russia knew that they had found a spokesman.

Shevchenko was now famous but he had chosen, without knowing it, ‘The Way of the Cross.’

A DREAM

This poem was written in 1847 in Siberia. Taken away suddenly from Ukraine, Shevchenko could not forget his mother land. His beloved Ukraine was very far from him, and he longed for her even in his dreams. He describes in the poem a dream which he had about the beauties of the Ukraine, which he had just left and which he never hoped to see again. The old man of whom he speaks represents the poet himself, who knew the miseries of his native land and who desired to spend the last hours of his life there.

Oh my lofty hills—
Yet not so lofty
But beautiful ye are.
Sky-blue in the distance;
Older than old Pereyaslav,
Or the tombs of Vebla,
Like those clouds that rest
Beyond the Dnieper.

I walk with quiet step,
And watch the wonders peeping out.
Out of the clouds march silently
Scarped cliff and bush and solitary tree;
White cottages creep forth
Like children in white garments,
Playing in the valley’s gloom.
And far below our gray old Cossack,
The Dnieper, sings musically
Amid the woods.
And then beyond the Dnieper on the hillside,
The little Cossack church
Stands like a chapel,
With its leaning cross.

Long it stands there, gazing, waiting,
For the Cossacks from the Delta;
To the Dnieper prattles,
Telling all its woe
From its green-stained windows,
Like eyes of the dead,
It peeps as from the tomb.
Dost thou look for restoration?
Expect not such glory.
Robbed are thy people.
For what care the wicked lords
For the ancient Cossack fame?

And Traktemir above the hill
Scatters its wretched houses
Like a drunken beggar’s bags.
And there is old Manaster
Once a Cossack town.
Is that the one that used to be?
All, all is gone, as a playground for the kings
The land of the Zaporogues and the village
All, all the greedy ones have taken.
And you hills, you permitted it!
May no one look on you more
Cursed ones!—No! No!
Not you I curse,
But our quarreling generals,
And the inhuman Poles.

Forgive me, my lofty ones,
Lofty ones and blue,
Finest in the world, and holiest,
Forgive me, I pray God.
For so I love my poor Ukraina,
I might blaspheme the holy God,
And for her lose my soul.
On a curve of lofty Traktemir
A lonely cottage like an orphan stands,
Ready to plunge from off the height
To loved Dnieper, far below.
From that house Ukraina is seen,
And all the land of the Hetmans.
Beside the house an old gray father sits.
Beyond the river the sun goes down
As he sits, and looks, and sadly thinks.
“Alas, Alas!” the old man cries,
“Fools, that lost this land of God,
The Hetmans’ land.”
His brow with thought is clouded,
Something bitter he would have said
But did not.

“Much have I wandered in the world,
In peasant’s coat and garb of lord.
How is it beyond the Ural,
Among the Kirghiz, Tartars?
Good God, even there it is better
Than in our Ukraina.
Perhaps because the Kirghiz
Are not Christians.
Much evil hast thou done, Oh Christ,
Hast changed the people God had made.
Our Cossacks lost their foolish heads
For truth, and the Christian faith.
Much blood they shed, their own and others.
And were they better for it?
Bah! No! They were ten times worse.
Apart from knife and auto-da-fe
They have chained up the people,
And they kill them.
Oh gentlemen, Christian gentlemen!”

My grey old man, with sorrow beaten,
Ceased, and bent his brave old head.
The evening sun gilded the woods,
The river and fields were covered with gold.
Mazeppa’s cathedral in whiteness shines;
Great Bogdan’s tomb is gleaming,
The willows bend o’er the road to Kiev,
And hide the Three Brothers’ ancient graves.
Trubail and Alta, mid the reeds
Approach, unite in sisterly embrace.
Everything, everything gladdens the eyes,
But the heart is sad and will not see.
The glowing sun has bade farewell
To the dark land.
The round moon rises with her sister star,
Out they step from behind the clouds.
The clouds rejoiced
But the old man gazed,
And his tears rolled down.
“I pray Thee, merciful God,
Mighty Lord, Heavenly Judge,
Suffer me not to perish;
Grant me strength to overcome my woe.
To live out my life on these sacred hills:
To glorify Thee and rejoice in Thy beauty,
And at last, though beaten by the people’s sins.
To be buried on these lofty hills,
And to abide on them.”

He dried his tears,
Hot tears, though not the tears of youth;
And thought on the blessed years of long ago
Where was this?
What, how, and when?
Was it truth, or was it dream?
On what seas have I been sailing?
The green wood in the twilight,
The maiden with eyebrows dark,
The moon at rest among the stars,
The nightingale on the viburnum,
Whether in silence or in song
Praising the Holy God.
And all, all is in Ukraina.
The old man smiled—
Well, it may be—you can’t avoid the truth
So it was—they wooed,
They parted, they did not marry.
She left him to live alone,
To live out his life.

The old man was sad again,
Wandered long about the house,
Then prayed to God,
Went in the house to sleep,
And the moon was swathed in clouds.

Thus in a foreign land
I dreamed my dream,
As if born again to the world
In freedom once more.
Grant me, Oh God, some time,
In old age, perchance,
To stand again on these stolen hills,
In a little cottage,
To bring my heart eaten out with sorrow
To rest at last, on the hills above the Dnieper.

A TRIUMPHAL MARCH

In 1845 Shevchenko was graduated from the Imperial Academy of Arts at Petersburg. Shortly after he travelled to the Ukraine, purposing to devote his life to the service of his own people.

His progress was a triumphal march, a succession of banquets and popular welcomes and entertainments at the homes of the wealthy.

At Kiev people still remember that the earliest Russian civilization had its beginnings in the Ukraine. There Christianity first took root, and there were the first Russian Princes.

Before Shevchenko’s arrival there was organized at Kiev the Society of Cyril and Methodius, called after the great apostles of Russia, and the leading spirits of the Society were professors in the University of Kiev.

Into this brilliant company Shevchenko was welcomed. Its leaders became his devoted friends. A chair of painting in the University was to be established for him.

Most remarkable were the relations between Shevchenko and Professor Kulisch. Kulisch was to be married to a great lady, a daughter of one of the nobles of the country. The poet was invited to the wedding and the bride, in her enthusiasm, actually kissed his hand. This was an astonishing act of condescension towards one who had been a serf, but this lady, herself afterwards a famous authoress, cherished the memory to her dying day.

Shevchenko’s saddest experience in the Ukraine was when he visited his native village and found his brothers and sisters in serfdom. His dream was to earn enough money to purchase their freedom, and afterwards to devote his life to the liberation of the peasantry. The poem—“The Bondwoman’s Dream”—commemorates the poet’s meeting with his favorite sister, Katherine, working as a slave.

His friends thought he should go to Italy to perfect himself in painting. Madame Kulisch purposed to sell her family jewels to raise sufficient money to send Shevchenko to that country. Her husband who was in the plot told Shevchenko that some wealthy person had contributed the money but he must not ask for the donor’s name.

But on returning to Kiev from the Kulisch home a policeman put his hand on the shoulder of the poet painter.

The bright dream was ended.

THE BONDWOMAN’S DREAM

The slave with sickle
reaped the wheat,
Then wearily limped
among the stooks;
But not to rest,
Her little son she sought
Who wakened crying
in cool nest
among the sheaves.
His swaddled limbs unwrapped
she nourished him,
Then, dandling him a moment
fell asleep.
In dreams she saw
her little son,
Her Johnny, grown to man,
handsome and rich.
No lonely bachelor
but a married man
In freedom it seemed,
no longer the landlord’s
but his own man.
And in their own joyous field
his wife and he
reaped their own wheat,
Their children brought their food.
The poor thing
laughed in her sleep,
Woke up—
a dream indeed it was.
She looked at Johnny,
picked him up and swaddled him,
And back to her allotted task;
Sixty stooks her stint.
Perhaps the last of the sixty it was:
God grant it.
And God grant
this dream of thine
may be fulfilled.

TO THE MAKERS OF SENTIMENTAL IDYLS.

Did you but know, fine dandy,
The people’s life of misery
You would not use such pretty phrases,
Nor give to God such empty praises.
At our tears you’re laughing,
And our sorrows chaffing,
Slave’s cot in a shady spot—
You call it heaven! Rot!
I lived once in such a shanty,
Of childhood’s tears I shed a plenty,
In bitter sorrows we were wise,
Home that you call paradise.

No paradise I call thee,
Little cottage in the wood,
With the water pure beside thee
Close by the village rude!
There my mother bore me,
Singing she tended me;
My child’s heart drank in her pain.

Cottage in the shady dell,
Heaven outside, inside hell;
But slavery there,
with labor weary,
Nor time for prayer
in life so dreary.

My mother good to her early grave
Was hurled by sorrows wave on wave.

The father weeping o’er his young,
(little and naked were we),
Sank ’neath the weight of fated wrong
And died in slavery.
The children, we, of home bereft
Like little mice ’mong neighbors crept.

Water drawer was I at school,
My brothers toiled ’neath landlord’s rule.

For my sisters an evil fate must be,
Though little doves they seemed to me;
Into life as serfs they’re born,
And die they must in that lot forlorn.

I shudder yet, where’er I roam,
When I think of life in that village home.

Evil-doers, Oh God, are we,
An earthly heaven we had from Thee,
Turned it into hell have we,
And a second heaven is now our plea.

Gently we live with our brothers now,
With their lives our fields we plough;
Fields that with their tears are wet,
And yet—
What do we know?
yet it seems as if Thou!
(For without Thy will
Should we suffer ill?)
Dost Thou, Oh Father in heaven holy
Laugh at us the poor and lowly?
Advise with them of noble birth
How so cleverly to rule the earth?

For see the woods their branches waving,
And there beyond, the white pool gleaming
And willows o’er the water bending,
Garden of Eden it is in sooth,
But of its deeds enquire the truth.

This wondrous earth should tell a story
Of endless joy, and praise, and glory
To Thee, Oh God, unique and holy.
Unhallowed spot,
Whence praise comes not!
A world of tears where curses rise,
To heaven above the hopeless skies.

AUTOCRAT VERSUS POET

Nicholas I was brought up in the traditions of autocracy and believed in them with all his heart. He hated liberal thought and detested the idea of educating the masses.

Tens of thousands of copies of the New Testament and the Psalter were burned by his orders. He said such books were for the priests, not for the common people. Incidentally it may be remarked that the priests had to teach what he wanted or lose their jobs.

To speak against his government, or even to criticize czars who reigned hundreds of years before him was a crime.

The little band of dreamers who formed the Society of Cyril and Methodius actually hoped to convert this autocrat, and secure his assistance in freeing the people. They had visions of a free Confederation of Slavonic states, after the pattern of the United States of America, but with the czar as head. But they sadly misjudged their man.

Shevchenko had actually spoken impertinently of the Autocrat in his poems. He refused to retract.

The government really wished to he 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.

A POEM OF EXILE

I count in prison the days and nights
And then forget the count.
How heavily, Oh Lord,
Do these days pass!
And the years flow after them,
Quietly they flow,
Bearing with them
Good and ill.
Everything do they gather
Never do they return.
You need not plead,
Your prayers unanswered fall.
Mid oozy swamps
among the weeds
Year after weary year
has sadly flowed.
Much of something have they taken
From dark store-house of my heart;
Borne it quietly to the sea,
As quietly the sea swallowed it.
Not gold and silver
Did they take from me,
But good years of mine
Freighted with loneliness,
Sorrows written on the heart
With unseen pen.
And a fourth year passes
So gently, so slowly,
The fourth book
of my imprisonment
I start to stitch up,
Embroidering it with tears
Of homesickness
in a foreign land.
Yet such woe
tells itself not in words.
Never, never
in the wide world.
In far away captivity
There are no words
Not even tears,
Just nothingness;
Not even God above thee,
Nothing is there to see,
None with whom to speak,
Not even desire for life.
Yet thou must live!
I must! I must!
But for what?
That I may not lose my soul?
My soul is not worth
such suffering!
Then why must I live on
in the world,
Drag these fetters
in my jail?
Because, perchance,
my own Ukraine
I shall see again.
Again I shall pour out
my words of sorrow
To the green groves
and rich meadows.
No family have I of my own
in all Ukraine,
Yet the people there
are different from these foreigners
I would walk again
among the bright villages
On the Dnieper’s banks
and sing my thoughts
gentle and sad.
Grant me,
Oh God of mercy
That I may live
to see again
Those green meadows,
those ancestral tombs.
If Thou wilt not grant this,
Yet bear my tears
To my Ukraine.
Because, God,
I die for her.
It may be that I shall lie
more lightly in foreign soil
When sometimes in Ukraine
they speak of my memory.
Carry my tears then
Oh God of loving kindness,
Or at least
send hope into my soul.
I can think no more
with my poor head,
For coldness of death
comes on me
When I think that they may
bury me in foreign soil
And bury my thoughts with me
And none tell about me
in the Ukraine.

And yet it may be
that gently through the years
My tear-embroidered songs
shall fly sometime
And fall
as dew upon the ground
On the tender heart of youth,
And youth shall nod assent.
And weep for me
Making mention of me in its prayers.
Well, as it will be
so it will be.
Perhaps ’twill swim
Perhaps ’twill wade
Yet even if they crucify me for it
I’ll still write my verses.

SIBERIAN EXILE

Now-a-days we have many discussions and searchings of heart over the question of prisons and the purpose of punishment. I doubt if the autocracy suffered many qualms of conscience in such matters. It was simply an affair of silencing a dangerous voice and disciplining an unruly subject.

They were too humane to put him to death, they merely sought to crush his spirit. But the Slav spirit is hard to crush. It may brood and smoulder long, but sometime or other it will burst out in flames.

In the case of Shevchenko another influence may be seen at work. In his ragged youth, when acting as assistant to a drunken church singer he gained at least one thing. That was a familiarity with the Psalter and the Hebrew prophets. The deep religious fire of the Hebrew seems fused with his own irrepressible native genius to form a spirit that could not be subdued.

They tried to make a soldier of him but he could not or would not learn the tricks of the soldier’s trade.

They forbade him to write but he wrote verses secretly and concealed them.

Occasionally a humane commander would relax the severity of the rules. One governor allowed him as a hidden favor the reading of the Bible and Shakespeare.

At another time he was taken with a scientific expedition to the Sea of Aral, and employed in the congenial task of painting the wild scenery of that part.

At other times again the severity would be redoubled and pen, ink and paper would be forbidden. Through it all his love and sorrow for his native land increased. Only the remembrance of Ukraine kept him alive.

Ten years of Siberia changed the gay young artist of bright eyes and abundant locks to a gray-bearded, bald-headed old man on whom Death had set his seal.

But his spirit was still unconquered. At the end of his imprisonment he wrote the “Goddess of Fame” and the “Hymn of the Nuns” to show it.

MEMORIES OF FREEDOM

Memories of Freedom
Bring sweet sadness to the exile’s heart
And so lost liberty of mine
I dream of thee.
Never hast thou seemed to me
So fresh and young
And so surpassing fair
As now in this foreign land.
Alas! Alas!
Freedom that I sang away
Look at me from o’er the Dnieper,
Smile at me from there.
And thou my only love
Risest o’er the sea so far.
In the mist thy face appears
Like the evening star.
With thee, my only one
Thou bring’st my youthful years.
Before me like a sea—
Hamlets fair in broad array,
Cherry orchards, joyous crowds.
This the village, This the people
Who once as brothers
Welcomed me.
Mother! Dear old mother!
Home of memories fond!
Happy guests of days gone by!
Who gathered there in days gone by
Simply to dance in the good old way
From evening light till dawn.
Do sun-burned youth
And happy maidenhood
Still dance in the dear old home?
And thou, sweetheart of mine,
Thou heartsease of mine,
My sacred, dark-eyed one!
Still amongst them dost thou walk
Silent and proud?
And with those blue-black eyes
Still dost bewitch
the peoples’ souls?
Still as of old
Do they admire in vain
Thy supple form?
Goddess mine! fate of mine!
How wee maidens
Gather round thee,
Chirping and prattling
In the good old way.

Perchance, unwittingly,
The children remember me,
One makes a little jest of me.
Smile, my heart!
Just a little, little smile
That no one sees.
That’s all. I, worse luck!
Must pray to God in jail.

MEMORIES OF AN EXILE

Memories of mine,
Memories of home,
Sole wealth of mine,
Where’er I roam.
When sorrows lower
In evil hour
And griefs o’ertake me
You’ll not forsake me
From the land of my early loves
You will fly like grey-winged doves
From broad Dnieper’s shore
O’er the steppes to soar.
Here the Kirghiz Tartars
Dwell naked in poverty.
They’re wretched as martyrs
Yet this is their liberty;
To God they may pray
And none say them nay.
Will you but fly to meet me,
With gentle words
I’ll greet ye.
Of my heart
ye children dear
O’er past loves
we’ll shed a tear.

DEATH OF THE SOUL

As the nights pass, so pass the days,
The year itself passes.
Again I hear the rustling
of autumn leaves.
The light of the eyes is fading,
Memory is in the heart asleep.
Everything sleeps,
and I know not
If I live or am already dead.
For so, aimless
I wander in the world
No longer weep nor laugh.

Fate, where art thou?
Fate, where art thou?
There’s none of any sort!
Dost grudge me good fate,
Oh God,
Then send it bad, as bad.
Leave me not
to a walking sleep.
With heart like bears’
in wintry den,
Nor yet like rotten log
on earth to lie;
But give me to live,
with the heart to live,
And love the people.
If you won’t
Let me curse them
and burn up the world.

Terrible it is to fall
into dungeons
Yet much worse—to sleep
And sleep and sleep
in freedom;
To slumber for an eternity
And leave not a footprint behind.
All alike—
whether one lives or dies.

Fate where art thou?
Fate where art thou?
There’s none of any sort!
Dost grudge me good fate, Oh God,
Then give me bad, as bad.

HYMN OF EXILE

The sun goes down beyond the hill,
The shadows darken, birds are still;
From fields no more come toiler’s voices
In blissful rest the world rejoices.
With lifted heart I, gazing stand,
Seek shady grove in Ukraine’s land.
Uplifted thus, ’mid memories fond
My heart finds rest, o’er the hills beyond.
On fields and woods the darkness falls
From heaven blue a bright star calls,
The tears fall down. Oh, evening star!
Hast thou appeared in Ukraine far?
In that fair land do sweet eyes seek thee
Dear eyes that once were wont to greet me?
Have eyes forgotten their tryst to keep?
Oh then, in slumber let them sleep
No longer o’er my fate to weep.

RETURNING HOME

After a while a new Caesar came to the throne, a man who was thought to have liberal tendencies.

Shevchenko’s friends at once busied themselves with efforts for his release. Finally amnesty was granted. Count Tolstoi, on receiving the news late at night, hastened to waken his household and there was a family jubilation.

But the new autocrat, though somewhat benevolently inclined, was also a little bit suspicious. The banished poet was a pretty dangerous character. He had even disturbed the conscience of autocracy itself, hence he was only allowed to approach his home country by degrees. Finally he was allowed to reside in Petrograd and later even in Ukraine, welcomed everywhere by loving and pitying friends.

His wish for his old age was to inhabit a little cottage on the Dnieper’s banks. For this purpose he purchased a piece of land on one of those hills so often referred to in his poems.

Death came too soon, however, but the property served as the site of his last resting place. He died at Petrograd but in the spring his remains were carried the long distance to his old home. A mourning people lined the way.

Only a couple of days after the poet’s death, appeared the ukase of the czar proclaiming the abolition of serfdom. To the common people it seemed that their peasant poet, by his songs and his sufferings, had been the prime cause of their new freedom.

No speeches were allowed at the interment on the hill above the Dnieper but there were many people and many wreaths of flowers.

One wreath, deposited by a lady, expressed more than anything else the common feeling. That wreath was a crown of thorns.

ON THE ELEVENTH PSALM

Merciful God, how few
Good folk remain on earth.
Behold, each one in heart
Is setting snares for another.
But with fine words,
And lips honey-sweet
They kiss—and wait
To see how soon
Their brother to his grave
Will find his way.

But Thou who art Lord alone
Shuttest up the evil lips,
That great-speaking tongue
That says:—
“No trifling thing are we,
How glorious shall we show
In intellect and speech.
Who is that Lord
that will forbid
Our thoughts and words?”

Yea, the Lord shall say to Thee
“I shall arise, this day
On their behalf—
People of mine in chains,
The poor and humble ones
These will I glorify.
Little, dumb and slaves are they,
Yet on guard about them
Will I set my Word.”

Like trampled grass
Shall perish your thoughts
And words alike.

Like silver, hammered, beaten,
Seven times melted o’er the fire,
Are thy words, Oh Lord.
Scatter these holy words of Thine,
O’er all the earth,
That Thy children
little and poor
May believe in miracles on earth.

PRAYER I.

To Tsars and kings
who tax the world,
Send dollars and ducats,
And fetters well-forged.

To toiling heads and toiling hands,
Laboring on these stolen lands
Endurance and strength.

To me, my God, on this sad earth,
Give me but love,
the heart’s paradise
And nothing more.

PRAYER II.

My prayer for the Tsars,
These traffickers in blood,
That Thou on them would’st put
Fetters of iron, in dungeons deep.

My prayer for the peoples
toiling long,
Do Thou to them
on their ravaged lands,
Send down Thy strength
most merciful One.
And for the pure in heart
Grant angel guards beside them,
To keep them pure.

And for myself, Oh Lord,
I ask nought else
But truth on earth to love,
And one true friend
to love me.

PRAYER III.

For those that have done wrong to me,
No longer do I fetters ask,
Nor dungeons deep.

For hands that faithful toil for good
Send Thy instructions’ gracious aid,
And Holy strength.

For tender ones,
the pure in heart
Do Thou, Oh God,
their virtue save
With angel’s guard.

For all Thy children on this earth
May they Thy wisdom
know alike,
In brother love.

PRAYER IV.

To those of the ever-greedy eyes,
Gods of earth, the Tsars,
Are the ploughs and the ships,
And all good things of earth
For these little gods.

To toiling hands,
To toiling brains
Is given to plough the barren field,
To think, to sow, and take no rest
And reap the fields anon.
Such the reward of toiling hands.

For the true-hearted lowly ones,
Peace-loving saints,
Oh, Creator of heaven and earth,
Give long life on earth,
And paradise beyond.

All good things of earth
Are for these gods, the Tsars,
Ploughs and ships,
All wealth of earth
For us—good luck!
Is left to love our brothers.

MIGHTY WIND

Mighty wind, mighty wind!
With the sea thou speakest;
Waken it, play with it,
Question the blue sea.
It knows where my lover is,
Far away it bore him.
It will tell, the sea will tell,
What it has done with him.

If it has drowned my darling,
Beat on the blue sea.
I go to seek my loved one,
And to drown my woe.
If I find him, I’ll cling to him,
On his heart I’ll faint.
Then waves bear me with him
Where’er the winds do blow.

If my lover is beyond the sea,
Mighty wind, thou knowest
Where he goes, what he does,
With him thou speakest.
If he weeps, then I shall weep,
If not, I sing.
If my dark-haired one has perished,
I shall perish, too.

Then bear my soul away
Where my loved one is,
Plant me as a red viburnum
On his tomb.
Better that an orphan lie
In a stranger’s field,
Over him his sweetheart
Will bud and bloom.

As a blossom of viburnum
Over him I’ll bloom,
That foreign sun may burn him not,
Nor strangers trample on his tomb.
At even I’ll grieve,
In the morning I’ll weep.
The sun comes up,
My tears I’ll dry,
And no one sees.

Mighty wind, mighty wind!
With the sea thou speakest.
Waken it, play on it,
Question the blue sea.

THE WATER FAIRY

Me my mother bore
’Mid lofty palace walls,
Me at midnight hour
In Dnieper’s flood she bathed;
And bathing, she murmured
Over little me:

“Swim, swim, little maid,
Adown the Dnieper water,
You’ll swim out a fairy
Next midnight, my daughter.
I go to dance with him,
My faithless lover;
You’ll come and lure him
Into the river.
No more shall he laugh at me,
At my tears out-flowing,
But o’er him the Dnieper
Its blue water is rolling.
Swim out, my only one,
He will come to dance with thee.
Waves, waves, little waves,
Greet ye the water fairy.”

Sadly she cried and ran away,
As I floated down the stream.
But sister fairies met me,
I grew as in a dream.
A week, and I dance at midnight,
And watch from the water pools.
What does my sinful mother?
Lives she still in shameful pleasure,
With him, the faithless lord?
Thus the fairy whispered,
Then like diving bird she dropped
Back in the stream,
And the willows bowed above her.

The mother comes to walk by the river side.
’Tis weary in the palace,
And the lord is not at home.
She comes to the bank, thinks of her little one
Whom she plunged in with muttered charms.
What matters it? She would go back to the palace,
But no, hers is another fate.
She noticed not how the river maidens hastened
Till they caught her, and tickled her ’mid laughter.
Joyfully they caught her, and played and tickled her,
And put her in a basket net
(Unto her death).
And then they roared and laughed;
But one little fairy did not laugh.

HYMN OF THE NUNS

Shevchenko had heard a story of nuns in a convent conveying messages to one another interspersed in the words of the religious service. The messages were to the effect that company was coming that night and there would be music and dancing. Hence this sardonically humorous poem.

Strike lightning above this house,
This house of God where we are dying,
Where we think lightly of Thee, God,
And, thinking lightly, sing
Hallelujah.

Were it not for Thee,
we had loved men;
Had courted and married,
Brought up children,
Taught them and sung
Hallelujah.

Thou hast cheated us,
poor wretches!
And we, defrauded and unlucky,
Ourselves have fooled Thee,
And howled and sung: Hallelujah.

With barber’s shears hast put us in this nunnery,
And we—young women still—
We dance and sing,
And singing say: Hallelujah.

TO THE GODDESS OF FAME

Hail, thou barmaid slovenly,
Stagg’ring like fish-wife drunkenly;
Where the dickens dost thou stay,
With thy stock of haloes, pray?
Was it on credit thou gavest one
To the thief of Versailles, that Corsican?
Perhaps now thou’rt whispering in some fellow’s ear;
And all because of boredom or beer.

Come then awhile with me to lodge,
Fondly, together, trouble we’ll dodge.
With a smack and a kiss
This dreary weather,
Let’s make a bargain
to live together.
Thou’rt a painted queen
with manners free,
Yet in thy company
I’d gladly be.

What though thou holdest
thy nose in air,
Dancest in barrooms
with kings at a fair;
And most with that chap
they call the Tsar;
Still that’s no bother,
thy stock’s still at par.

Come, my dear, make haste to me,
Let me have a look at thee;
Bestow on me a little smile,
’Neath thy bright wings
I’d rest a while.

ICONOCLASM

Bright light, peaceful light,
Free light, light unbound!
What is this, brother light?
In thy warm home thou’rt found
By censers smoked,
By priests’ robes choked,
Fettered and fooled
And by Icons ruled.
Yield thee not in the fight,
Waken up, brother light!
Shed thy pure rays
On mankind’s ways.
All priestly robes in rags we’ll tear
And light our pipes from censers rare,
With Icons now the flames will roar,
With holy brooms we’ll sweep the floor.

MY TESTAMENT

When I die, remember, lay me
Lowly in the silent tomb,
Where the prairie stretches free,
Sweet Ukraine, my cherished home.

There, ’mid meadows’ grassy sward,
Dnieper’s waters pouring
May be seen and may be heard,
Mighty in their roaring.

When from Ukraine waters bear
Rolling to the sea so far
Foeman’s blood, no longer there
Stay I where my ashes are.

Grass and hills I’ll leave and fly.
Unto throne of God I’ll go,
There in heaven to pray on high,
But, till then, no God I know.

Standing then about my grave,
Make ye haste, your fetters tear!
Sprinkled with the foeman’s blood
Then shall rise your freedom fair.

Then shall spring a kinship great,
This a family new and free.
Sometimes in your glorious state,
Gently, kindly, speak of me.