Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/68

62 Was not escaped a soldier he

From the German powdered ranks;

How then aristocrat am I to be?

God be thanked, I am but a citizen.

My grandsire Radsha in warlike service

To Alexander Nefsky was attached.

The Crowned Wrathful, Fourth Ivan,

His descendants in his ire had spared.

About the Tsars the Pushkins moved;

And more than one acquired renown,

When against the Poles battling was

Of Nizhny Novgorod the citizen plain.

When treason conquered was and falsehood,

And the rage of storm of war,

When the Romanoffs upon the throne

The nation called by its Chart—

We upon it laid our hands;

The martyr's son then favored us;

Time was, our race was prized,

But I &hellip; am but a citizen obscure.

Our stubborn spirit us tricks has played;

Most irrepressible of his race,

With Peter my sire could not get on;

And for this was hung by him.