Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Russia: Vol. XX. 1876–79.

Nijni-Novgorod

The Fair of Nijni-Novgorod

By Edna Dean Proctor (1829–1923)

NOW, by the Tower of Babel,

Was ever such a crowd?

Here Turks and Jews and Gypsies,

There Persians haughty-browed;

With silken-robed Celestials,

And Frenchmen from the Seine,

And Khivans and Bokhariotes,—

Heirs of the Oxus plain.

Here stalk Siberian hunters;

There tents a Kirghiz clan

By mournful-eyed Armenians

From wave-girt Astrakhan;

And Russ and Pole and Tartar,

And mounted Cossack proud,—

Now, by the Tower of Babel,

Was ever such a crowd?