is pictures of
peasant life are equally fine; that in "Red-Nosed Frost" (the Russian
equivalent of Jack Frost) is particularly famous, and the peasant
heroine, in her lowly sphere, yields nothing in grandeur to the ladies
of the court.

The theme of "Red-Nosed Frost" may be briefly stated in a couple of its
verses, in the original meter:

There are women in Russian hamlets
With a dignified calmness of face;
With a beautiful strength in their movements,
With mien and glance of an empress in grace.

A blind man alone could ignore them;
And he who can see them must say:
"She passes--'tis as though the sun shineth!
She looks--'tis giving rubles away!"

A noble-minded, splendid peasant woman, who has worthily fulfilled all
the duties of her hard lot, at last becomes a widow. The manner of it;
the quaint folk-remedies employed to heal the sick man; the making of
the shroud by the bereaved wife; the digging of his grave by his father;
the funeral; all are described. The widow drives the sledge with the
coffin to the grave. On her return home she finds that the fire is out
and that there is no wood on hand. Intrusting her two children to the
care of a neighbor, she drives off with the sledge to the forest to cut
some. As she collects the fuel, her thoughts wander back over the past,
and she sees a vision of her life, its joys and sorrows. Just as she is
about to set out for home, she pauses, approaches a tall pine-tree with
her axe, and there Jack Frost woos and wins her, and she remains, frozen
stiff. The beauty and interest of the poem quite escape in this
(necessarily) bald summary. The same is the case with "Russian Women."
The first poem of this is entitled "Princess Trubetzkoy." It begins by
narrating how the "Count-father" prepares the covered traveling sledge
for the Princess, who is bent upon the long journey to Siberia, to join
her husband, one of the "Decembrists," exiled for participation in the
tumults of 1825, on the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. He
spreads a thick bear-skin rug, puts in down-pillows, hangs up a holy
image (_ikona_) in the corner, grieving the while. After this prologue,
the journey of the devoted wife is described; the monotonous way being
spent in great part by the noble woman in vision-like memories of her
happy childhood, girlhood, and married life. On arriving at Irkutsk she
receives a visit from the governor, an old subordinate of her fa