l like tear-drops
The gleaming pearls of morning dew.

Scattered, alas! her tender leaflets,
In howling storms,--so far, so wide!
Ne'er will the birch, to greet the Springtide,
Be fresh adorned in leafy pride!

NIKITIN.

NORTH AND SOUTH

Knowest thou the land of fragrance ardent glowing?
Where night sublimely sparkles on the flowing
Of the sea? Murmuring in starlight gleam--
Weaving about the heart a wonder dream?
Refulgent in the silvering moonbeams white,
In soft half darkness, gardens slumbering light;
Only the fountain's iridescent foam
Upon the grass falls splashing down--
And images of Gods with lips of silence
Sunk in deep musing gaze on every side--
While, eloquent of fallen majesty,
Ruins entwined with ivy tendrils be?
Soft pictured on the valley's verdant meadows
Dark cypress trees reflect their slender shadows;
Earth's bosom blooming in fecundity--
And freedom here man's joyful destiny.

Yet more than tropic's soft abundance thralling,
My stormy North-land wilderness is calling!
Her snowflake flocks, her gleaming midnight frosts,
The glory of grim forests on her coasts,
Green tinted Steppes with distant bluish rim--
The trooping clouds in heaven's spaces dim.
Unto the heart how the familiar cries!
The village mean that in the valley lies,
The wealthy cities' towering majesty,
The empty snow-fields' endless boundary,--
The changeful moods that all unbridled throng;
Spirit of Russia and of Russian song!
With joy now gushing forth,--with pain now ringing--
Unto the hearer's heart resistless singing.

Thou fairest picture! my breast with rapture sighs,
My spirits free, victorious arise!
A song breaks forth to Russia's praise and glory,
And tears of joy, the while I muse, are flowing.
And jubilant the kindling heart must cry--
Hail Russia, Hail! Thy loyal son am I!

NIKITIN.

HUNGER

Hark! Who knocks with bony fingers
On the hut's small window latch?
Hark! Who pulls away the stubble
Rustling, from the roofing thatch?

From the fields it is not Vintage,
Drunk and weary wavers home--
'Tis a spectre, meagre, gloomy,
As a nightmare dread become.

All subduing, all destroying,
In his ragged garment poor,
Drags he,--on his crutches limping--
Noiseless reeling through the door.

Like the usurer hard hearted,
For his last kopek in quest,
Coffer, cupboard both he opens,
Breaks the lock of case and chest.

Lordly rules he, late and early--
In the gra