Batuschka.

From yonder gilded minaret
Beside the steel-blue Neva set,
I faintly catch, from time to time,
The sweet, aerial midnight chime--
"God save the Tsar!"

Above the ravelins and the moats
Of the white citadel it floats;
And men in dungeons far beneath
Listen, and pray, and gnash their teeth--
"God save the Tsar!"

The soft reiterations sweep
Across the horror of their sleep,

"Little Father," or "Dear Little Father,"
a term of endearment applied
to the Tsar in Russian folk-song.
As if some daemon in his glee
Were mocking at their misery--
"God save the Tsar!"

In his Red Palace over there,
Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer.
How can it drown the broken cries
Wrung from his children's agonies?--
"God save the Tsar!"

Father they called him from of old--
Batuschka! . . .    How his heart is cold!
Wait till a million scourged men
Rise in their awful might, and then--
God save the Tsar!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American writer, poet, critic, and editor. He is notable for his long editorship of The Atlantic Monthly. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, much of his writing was inspired by his experiences in the city. He wrote volumes of poetry, novels, and short stories. Aldrich's semi-autobiographical book, "The Story of a Bad Boy," is considered an early example of the "bad boy" genre in American literature.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Sargent's Portrait Of Edwin Booth At "The Players"

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

Pauline Pavlovna

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

Pillared Arch And Sculptured Tower

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

A Dedication

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Simple Poetry

English

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The White Czar is Peter the Great.Batyushka, Father dear, and Gosudar, Sovereign, are titles the Russian people are fond of giving to the Czar in their popular songs.

Dost thou see on the rampart's height
That wreath of mist, in the light
Of the midnight moon?    O, hist!
It is not a wreath of mist;
It is the Czar, the White Czar,
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He has heard, among the dead,
The artillery roll o'erhead;
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He is awake! the White Czar,
    Batyushka!    Gosudar!

He has heard in the grave the cries
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He has rent the gold brocade
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From the Vol...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sic Semper Liberatoribus!

    March 13, 1881.

As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip,
Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare
The front of heaven, while always unawares
Weird monsters start above, around, beneath,
Each glaring from some uglier mask of death,


So the White Czar imperial progress made
Through terror-haunted days.    A shock, a cry
Whose echoes ring the globe - the spectre's laid.
Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie
Resting in peace - fear, change, and death gone by.
Fit end for nightmare - mist of blood and tears,
Red climax to the slow, abortive years.


The world draws breath - one long, deep-shuddering sigh,
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Skaal

While they struggle on exhausted,
While they plough through bog and flood,
While they drag their sick and wounded
Where the tracks are drenched with blood;
While the Fates seemed joined to crush her
And her bravest hearts lie low,
I might sing one song for Russia,
Even though she be our foe.
Still be generous to foemen,
And have charity for all,
Right or wrong, fill up the wine cup;
Skaal! unto all brave men, Skaal!

While they suffer, cold and hungry,
All the heart-break of defeat,
And the twice heroic rearguard
Grimly holds the grim retreat;
While they fight the last alive on
Fields where countless corpses are,
We might drop one tear for Ivan,
Dead for Russia and the Czar!

Sullen grief of boorish brother,
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Pauline Pavlovna

SCENE: St. Petersburg. Period: the present time. A ballroom in the
winter palace of the Prince--. The ladies in character costumes and
masks. The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the
exception of six tall figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with
marked distinction as they move here and there among the
promenaders. Quadrille music throughout the dialogue.
Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just
arrived, is standing anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber
with his eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor
in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently disengages herself
from the crowd, and passes near Count PANSHINE, who
impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold
of the inner apartment, which is unoccupied.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Russia: an Ode

I
Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom,
Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom;
Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure
More than ever sin conceived of pains impure;
More than ever ground men's living souls to dust;
Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust.
Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas
Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell,
Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night
Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
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The Revolution In Russia.

From Lapland to the land of Tamerlane,
Kamchatka to the confines of the Turk,
The spirit tyrants never can restrain
When once awake is mightily at work.
Liberty, frantic with a fearful hope,
Out of long darkness suddenly arisen,
Maddens the dull half-human herds who grope
And rend the bars of their ancestral prison.

Over the wan lone steppe her couriers speed,
The secret forest echoes her command,
She smites the sword that made her children bleed,
And Death and Havoc hold the famished land.
But God overrules, and oft man's greatest good
Is won through nights of dread and days of blood.

W. M. MacKeracher