RUSSIA
What can the secret link between us be?
Why does your song’s unresting ebb and flow
Speak to me in a language that I know?
Why does the burden of your mystery
Come like the message of a friend to me?
Why do I love your vasts of corn or snow,
The tears and laughter of your sleepless woe,
The murmur of your brown immensity?
I cannot say, I only know that when
I hear your soldiers singing in the street,
I know it is with you that I would dwell;
And when I see your peasants reaping wheat,
Your children playing on the road, your men
At prayer before a shrine, I wish them well.
A JUNE NIGHT IN RUSSIA
A concert. Hark to the prelude’s opening bar!
Played by the sheep bells tinkling on the hill;
Dogs bark and frogs are croaking near the mill,
The watchman’s rattle beats the time afar.
Like water bubbling in a magic jar,
The nightingale begins a liquid trill,
Another answers; and the world’s so still,
You’d think that you could hear that falling star.
I scarcely see for light the stars that swim
Aloof in skies not dark but only dim.
The women’s voices echo far away.
And on the road two lovers sing a song:
They sing the joy of love that lasts a day:
The sorrow of love that lasts a whole life long.
HARVEST IN RUSSIA
The breeze has come at last. The day was long;
And in the lustrous air the dark bats fly;
And Hark! It is the reapers passing by,
I hear the burden of their peaceful song.
A voice intones; and swift the answering throng
Take up the theme and build the harmony;
The music swells and soars into the sky
And dies away intense, and clear and strong.