Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Russia: Vol. XX. 1876–79.
The Dwina
By Countess OrloffS
Horsemen and wagons cross, scoring no dint;
Cossacks patrol thee, and leave thee as hard;
Camp-fires but blacken and spot thee, like pard;
For the dead, silent river lies rigid and still.
Scaring the night-wolves with carols and whoops;
Crackle their fagots of driftwood and hay,
And the steam of their pots fills the nostrils of day;
But the dead, silent river lies rigid and still.
Lovers and comrades,—and none doth he drown!
Harness-bells tinkling in musical glee,
For to none comes the sorrow that came unto me,
And the dead, silent river lies rigid and still.
Where Iran, my dead, has no grass on his grave,
Stronger than granite that coffins a Czar,
Solid as pavement, and polished as spar,—
Where the dead, silent river lies rigid and still.
Fatal the clasp of thy slippery hand;
Cruel as vulture’s the clutch of thy claws;
Who shall redeem from the merciless jaws
Of the dead, silent river, so rigid and still?
Trembled the white moon through haze in the west;
Far in the thicket the wolf-cub was howling,
Down by the sheep-cotes the wolf-dam was prowling;
And the dead, silent river lay rigid and still.
Lightly and cheerily slept on the sward,—
Light with his hopes of the morrow and me,
That the reeds on the margin leaned after to see;
But the dead, silent river lay rigid and still.
O’er the broad Dwina, the forester crost;
Snares at his girdle, and gun at his side,
Game-bag weighed heavy with gifts for his bride:
And the dead, silent river lay rigid and still.
Crouching for him who went singing his way.
Oxen were stabled, and sheep were in fold;
But Iran was struggling in torrents ice-cold,
’Neath the dead, silent river, so rigid and still.
Small was the fissure that swallowed my lord;
Glassy ice-sheetings had frozen above,—
A crystalline cover to seal up my love
In the dead, silent river, so rigid and still.
Faithful I watch for my bridegroom’s return
When the moon sparkles on hoar-frost and tree
I see my love crossing the Dwina to me
O’er the dead, silent river, so rigid and still.
Howls the northeast wind, the dusty snow drives.
Snapping like touchwood I hear the ice crack,
And my lover is drowned in the water-hole black,
’Neath the dead, silent river, so rigid and still.