Page:Russian Novelists (1887).djvu/39

Rh consoles the sorrowing crowd clustered around him : —

"Weep not, dear brethren! I will give you a mountain of gold, a river of honey ; I will leave you gardens planted with vines, fruits, and manna from heaven." But the Apostle John interrupts him, saying : —

"Do not give them the mountain of gold, for the princes and nobles will take it from them, divide it among themselves, and not allow our brothers to approach. If thou wishest these unfortunates to be fed, clothed, and sheltered, bestow upon them Thy Holy Name, that they may glorify it in their lives, on their wanderings through the earth."

The song of " The Band of Igor," an epic poem, describing the struggle with the pagan hordes from the south-west, and supposed by some authors to have been inspired by Homer, is the most ancient, and the prototype of all others of the Middle Age. The soul of the Slavonic poet of this time is Christian only in name. The powers he believes in are those of nature and the universe. He addresses invocations to the rivers, to the sea, to darkness, the winds, the sun. The continual contrast between the beneficent Light and the evil Darkness recalls the ancient Egyptian hymns, which always describe the eternal contest between day and night.

Pushkin says of the "Song of Igor," the origin of