TTER

Letter of love so strangely thrilling
With all your countless wonder yet,
Though Time our heart's hot fires have mastered,
Bringing a pang of pained regret!
The while your blest receiver holds you,
His banished passions still rebel,
No longer reason sacrifices
His sentiment,--so then farewell!
Destroyed be this love-token treasured!
For if 'tis read when time has flown,
Deep in the buried soul 'twill waken
The torment vanished days have known.
At first but a light scorn arousing
For silly childishness,--at last
With fiery yearning overwhelming,
And jealousy for all the past.

O Thou, from whom a myriad letters
Speak with the breath of love to me,
Though my gaze rest on thee austerely,
Yet, yet,--I cannot part with thee!
Time has revealed with bitter clearness
How little thou with truth wert blessed,
How like a child my own behaviour--
Yet, dear to me I still must save
This flower scentless, without colour,
From off my manhood's early grave!

NEKRASSOW.

WHAT THE SLEEPLESS GRANDAM THINKS

All through the cold night, beating wings shadowy
Sweep o'er the church-village poor,--
Only one Grandam a hundred years hoary,
Findeth her slumber no more.

Harkens, if cocks to the dawn be not crowing,
Rolls on her oven and weeps,
Sees all her past rising up to confront her--
O'er her soul shameful it creeps!

"Woe to me sinner old! Woe! Once I cheated--
When from the church door I ran,
And in the depths of the forest strayed hidden
With my beloved Ivan.

"Woe to me! Burning in hell's leaping fires
Surely will soon be my soul!
I took a pair of eggs once at a neighbor's--
Out from her hen--yes, I stole!

"Once at the harvest at home I did linger--
Swore I was deadly sick,--when
Taking my part in the drunken carousals
Saturday night with the men!

"Light was I ever with soldiers! Yet cursing
God's name, when from me at last,--
My own son they took for a soldier!
Even drank cream on a fast.

"Woe to me sinner! Woe to me wretched one!
Woe! My heart broken will be!
Holy Madonna, have pity, have mercy!
Into court go not with me!"

NEKRASSOW.

_The stoves of the peasants are built so that they can sleep on top of
them in the extreme cold of Winter_.

TO RUSSIA

'Neath a giant tent
Of the heavens blue,
Stretch the verdant Steppes;
Range beyond the view.

On the distant rim
Lift the outlines proud,
Of their mountain walls
To the drifting cloud.

Th