In green enchantment stands the Kurgan,
Where evening dampness doth enfold,
The night descends with sleep and coolness,
The morning sunbeams touch with gold.
Yet loveless, helpless stands the birch tree--
In heaven's grey, musing sad to view,
And from its branches fall like tear-drops
The gleaming pearls of morning dew.
Scattered, alas! her tender leaflets,
In howling storms,--so far, so wide!
Ne'er will the birch, to greet the Springtide,
Be fresh adorned in leafy pride!
NIKITIN.
NORTH AND SOUTH
Knowest thou the land of fragrance ardent glowing?
Where night sublimely sparkles on the flowing
Of the sea? Murmuring in starlight gleam--
Weaving about the heart a wonder dream?
Refulgent in the silvering moonbeams white,
In soft half darkness, gardens slumbering light;
Only the fountain's iridescent foam
Upon the grass falls splashing down--
And images of Gods with lips of silence
Sunk in deep musing gaze on every side--
While, eloquent of fallen majesty,
Ruins entwined with ivy tendrils be?
Soft pictured on the valley's verdant meadows
Dark cypress trees reflect their slender shadows;
Earth's bosom blooming in fecundity--
And freedom here man's joyful destiny.
Yet more than tropic's soft abundance thralling,
My stormy North-land wilderness is calling!
Her snowflake flocks, her gleaming midnight frosts,
The glory of grim forests on her coasts,
Green tinted Steppes with distant bluish rim--
The trooping clouds in heaven's spaces dim.
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