Page:Songs of Russia.djvu/29

 As if some friend of deeply truthful soul
 * Had come to us—all angry, wretched, ill—

And had begun to speak, our circle now,
 * Revived and filled with joy, grew hushed and still.

Groundless complaints and clamorous phrases loud,
 * And vanity, with its envenomed darts—

Whatever of harm life, like a viewless plague,
 * Sows ’mid us all, e’en in the noblest hearts—

All these grew calm, and only one desire,
 * One impulse in us all blazed into fire—

To suffer and to strive with all our souls
 * To scatter the surrounding darkness dire.

O friend! your notes revealed to us that night
 * All that was false in us, unseen till then;

And we clasped hands more firmly when at dawn
 * We to our daily work returned again.