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 The soft reiterations sweep Across the horror of their sleep, As if some demon in his glee Were mocking at their misery— "God save the Tsar!"

In his red palace over there, Wakeful, he needs must hear the prayer. How can it drown the broken cries Wrung from his children's agonies?— "God save the Tsar!"

Father they called him from of old— Batuschka! How his heart is cold! Wait till a million scourgèd men Rise in their awful might, and then— "God save the Tsar!"

Breshkovskaya

(Contemporary American poet and novelist. Catherine Breshkovsky, called "Little Mother" by the Russian peasants, was sentenced to a long term of exile in Siberia when seventy-seven years of age)

How narrow seems the round of ladies' lives And ladies' duties in their smiling world, The day this Titan woman, gray with years, Goes out across the void to prove her soul! Brief are the pains of motherhood that end In motherhood's long joy; but she has borne The age-long travail of a cause that lies Still-born at last on History's cold lap.