Of my youthful days once more.

* * * * *

Perhaps our readers would like to see a _Russian Sonnet_. To many the
name of such a thing will seem a union of two contradictory terms; but,
nevertheless, here is a sonnet, and not a bad one either.

THE MADONNA.

With mighty pictures by the Great of Old
Ne'er did I long to deck my cell, intending
That visitors should gape and peer, commending
In Connoisseurship's jargon quaint and cold.

One picture only would I aye behold
On these still walls, 'mid these my toils unending;
One, and but one: From mists of cloudy gold
The Virgin Mother, o'er her Babe-God bending--

_Her_ eyes with grandeur, _His_ with reason bright--
Should calm look down, in glory and in light,
While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven.
And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine:
Thou, my Madonna, thou to me wert given,
Divinest form of beauty most divine!

* * * * *

The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of
samples, selected from Pushkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled
_Andre Chenier_. This composition is founded upon one of the most
well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the
execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the
lines. The story of Chenier's imprisonment and untimely death, as well
as the various allusions to the beautiful verses addressed by him to his
fellow-prisoner, La Jeune Captive, to his calm bearing on the scaffold,
and to the memorable exclamation which was made in the last accents ever
uttered by his lips; all these things are, doubtless, sufficiently
familiar to our readers; or, if not, a single reference, either to any
of the thousand books describing that most bloody and yet powerfully
attractive period of French history--nay, the simple turning to the
article _Chenier_, in any biographical dictionary, will be amply
sufficient to recall to the memory the principal facts of the sad story
which Pushkin has made the subject of his noble elegy. It will be
therefore unnecessary for us to detail the life and death of the hero of
the poem, and we shall only throw together, in these short preliminary
remarks, the few quotations and notes appended by the Russian poet to
his work. These will not be found of any very formidable extent; and as
the poem itself is not of a considerable length, we trust