IVAN Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
Of the Army of the Danube, is a private—nothing more;
And nobody expects of him to form a wise decision
On the diplomatic reasons that have mobilized his corps.
He is rather dull and stupid, and not given much to reading,
And even when he has a thought his words are few and rude;
So when summoned to his sotnia, about that same proceeding
Rough Ivan’s stray ideas were most miserably crude.
But he heard his colonel reading out the regimental order,
Which explains in glowing language why the Russians go to war;
And he holds some dim idea that he’s on the Turkish border,
“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
Ivan Petrokoffsky is a little tender-hearted—
His feelings, for a private, are completely out of place—
And when from wife and infant, with slow, lingering steps he parted,
No heroic agitation was depicted on his face.
It was well for foolish Ivan that his colonel had not found him,
When the marching order reached him at his home that bitter day,
When the younger Ivan’s chubby little arms were folded round him,
And tearful Mistress Ivan gave her tongue unbounded sway.
There were murmurs of rebellion in that quiet Volga village
(So devoid of patriotic aspirations women are),
When Ivan and his comrades left for scenes of blood and pillage,
“For the glory of the Empire and the honor of the Czar!”
Ivan Petrokoffsky, of the 21st Division
Of the Army of the Danube, is not easy in his mind,
For within the deep recesses of his heart is a suspicion
He has wept farewell forever to the loved ones left behind.
In cruel dreams he sees himself, a shapeless mass and gory,
By the rolling Danube lying, with his purple life-stream spent,
And he has not such a keen appreciation of the glory
Of dying for his country to be happy or content.
He has seen his comrades falling round, all mangled, torn, and bleeding,
And their cries were not of triumph, but of homes and kindred far,
While little recked the vultures, on the gray-robed bodies feeding,
Of “the glory of the Empire or the honor of the Czar!”
THE EMPEROR’S RING.
THE stillness of death broods o’er valley and mountain,
The snow lies below like a funeral shroud;
The clutch of the ice chokes the song of the fountain;
Starry eyes from the skies dimly gleam through each cloud;
When, hark! on the hard, frozen earth strikes the thunder
Of fast-falling hoof-beats with sonorous sound,
Scared villagers waken in somnolent wonder,
The sentinel checks his monotonous round.
Ho! Governor, let not thy dreamings encumber
With pause the swift flight of yon messenger’s wing,
For fatal the stay thou wouldst cause by thy slumber,
The horseman who rides with the Emperor’s ring.
Fresh horse and new pistols—some phrases of warning,
Few and brief, to the chief, and the fort is behind,
And away in the gray of the slow-dawning morning
Flies his steed with the speed of the fierce northern wind.
Out, out through the forests—on, on o’er the meadows,
While castle and cabin and hamlet and town
Rise and fall, come and go, past his vision like shadows.
With white snowy robes over bosoms of brown,
The woodcutter leaps from his path with a shiver;
To their babes, in mute terror, the pale mothers cling;
And the gray-coated hero salutes with a quiver
The ominous flash of the Emperor’s ring.
Some guess, but none question, the message he carries,
All divine by the sign ’tis of life or of death;
And woe to the wretch through whose folly he tarries;
Better Fate, with grim hate, strangled out his first breath,
For earth has no cavern to shield and defend him,
Nor ocean a sheltering island so far
As to hide from the scourge that will torture and rend him,
Whose blunder or crime has enraged the White Czar.
So serf and proud baron, so moujik and banker
Keep aside, unless aid to his mission you bring.
Speed him on, and rejoice when you earn not the rancor
Of one who bears with him the Emperor’s ring.
We Russians are brave, but we only are human;
We cower at a power it is death to offend,
Even Ivan, the bear-killer, shrinks like a woman
From frown of a clown with Alexis as friend.
The wolves on our steppes are a thousand times bolder;
Peer and peasant alike for their banquets they claim;
The blood in yon courtier’s veins may be colder
Than the serfs, but ’twill serve for their feast all the same.
Out there in the solitude, silent and lonely,
These prowlers of night know but Hunger as king.
And the Cossacks may find of that messenger only
A few whitened bones and the Emperor’s ring.
BLACK LORIS.
SPURS jingle and lances shine;
A hundred brave horsemen in line;
Gay voices ring as they merrily sing,
For why should true hearts repine?
The pathway is level and balmy the air,
Their bosoms unruffled by shadow of care;
The sun has but reached its meridian height,
“Twenty versts farther on we shall slumber to-night.”
When, crash! from the thickets that border the way,
Bursts a hail-storm of bullets in death-dealing spray;
In front a wall rises of turban-crowned foes,
And half of the sotnia fall ’neath their blows.
But still with teeth set, and a joyous hurrah,
With lances at rest and a cheer for the Czar,
Charge fifty brave horsemen in line!