Page:Songs of Russia.djvu/46

 “Say, did graves give you birth, and do you leave
 * No parents and no wife behind to weep—

No child who will lament when you are lost
 * In these abysses terrible and deep?

“Do you leave no one to feel grief for you,
 * To long for you, shed tears in sorrow sore,

When the vast watery graveyard covers you
 * And you unto the earth return no more?

“Have you no country and no fatherland,
 * No friendly house, no home to which to go,

That you have such contempt for life, and wait
 * For the dark grave without a sign of woe?

“No one in heaven have you on whom to call
 * From trouble’s depths, no God to whom to cry?

Have you no nation, say, have you no faith?
 * Ye wretched ones, what is your destiny?”

Yawns the abyss, and loud the billows roar;
 * Creaks the ship’s rigging as the blast sweeps by;

The tempest howls, and wildly pipe the winds;
 * And thus, at last, with tears one makes reply:

“The graveyard dark was not our mother, nay,
 * Nor was the grave our cradle-bed of old.