Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

there to being free?

Limits to my wishes everywhere I see,

Shared power has arisen in the polity,

A common curb on powers has come to be.

To it society obeys in everything,

Everywhere unanimous agreeing.

The common good has no anxiety.

In the power of all I see my fate,

In the will of all my will partakes,

This is what the law is in society.

4

Amidst a lush and grassy valley,

Among fields bowed with harvest crops,

Where flourishes the tender lily,

Among the peaceful shade of olive groves.

Than Parian marble even whiter,

Than luminous days yet brighter,

A temple stands, its sides diaphanous,

No sacrifice burns there in falsity,

A fiery note hangs there, we see:

“An end to woes of innocence.”

5

With branch of olive crowned,

On hardened stone there seated,

Remorseless and cold-blooded,

A deaf divinity…………

and so on—law is portrayed as a divinity in a temple whose guards are truth and justice.

6

He elevates his steely gazes,

Joy and awe about him pouring,

Fairly looks on all the faces,

Neither loving them or hating.

To flattery alien, and deception, withal,

He ancestry, eminence, wealth reviles,

Material sacrifice is nothing fine,

To kinship and attachment blind,

Reward and punishment do not him bind,

For on this earth his image is divine.

7

Behold this monster terrible,

A hydra with its hundred heads,

In tears, insistent to implore,

Rife with poison in his jaws.

It tramples hard on earthly powers

Its head as high as heaven towers,

Proclaims that region as its sphere

Phantoms, darkness, everywhere it sows

To flatter and deceive is the thing it knows,

Obedience from all is what’s held dear.

8

With darkness reason dimming,

And spreading widely lowly venom …

A depiction of holy superstition depriving man of sensibility, dragging him into the yoke of servitude and error, dressing him in armor:

To fear the truth was commanded ….

Power calls this a slander of divinity; reason, a deception.

9

In regions wide we do survey,

Where stands a throne of slavery darkly….

In a period of peace and tranquility, sacred and political superstition, the two reinforcing one another,

Together by them society is hassled.

One takes aim to pin down reason,

T’other strives free will to pinion,

For the common good this is declared.

10

In the shade of servile rest,

Crops will never be their best,

Where hindrance slows down very thought,

Grandeur’s bound to come to naught.

And all the evil consequences of slavery, such as: carelessness, indolence, cunning, hunger, and so on.

11

His arrogant brow uplifted,

The Tsar a steely scepter prizes,

Upon a thund’rous throne ensconced

The people like some vermin he despises.

Life and death are within his grasp:

‘A villain I can spare,’ he spake,

‘Power I am able to bequeath,

When I laugh everyone laughs too

When I in menace frown, all feel rue

You will live if I order you to live.’

12

And we harken calmly …

how a hungry serpent, reviling all, poisons days of joy and merriment. But, whilst around your throne all kneel—tremble, now an avenger advances, prophesying liberty….

13

The martial host arises, widely bristling,

Hope her arms on all does fasten,

In blood of crowned tormentor glistening,

To wash away one’s shame they hasten.

The sword is sharp, I spy it widely gleams,

In many guises death flies down, it seems,

Above the prideful head it holds.

Exalt you nations now in fetters,

By right of nature avenge tormentors

And lead the king up to the scaffold.

14

And now the vail of lying night,

With mighty crash is sorely pierced,

The idol huge of stubborn might,

Of might conceited—it lies trampled;

A giant hundred-armed in chains

Is, like a citizen, dragged back again

To face the throne the people claim:

“You violator of power granted me!

Tell, you villain, crowned by me,

How dare you rebel and inflame?

15

I clothed you in a cloak of porphyry,

Equality in society to oversee,

To keep the widow and the orphan ever free

From woe, their innocence yours to foresee.

To innocence a father, child-loving,

But as avenger implacably unbending

’Gainst falsehood, vice and calumny;

Deeds with honor given to rewarding,

Evil by good planning given to preempting,

Morality preserved in all her purity.

16

I covered the sea in ships….

Gave a means to the acquisition of riches and well-being. I wished the landworker to be not captive in his field and would bless you….

17

In the shedding of blood unstinting,

A thunderous host I mounted,

Canons, huge, of bronze, by casting,

Evildoers from abroad I punished.

Obedience to you was decreed,

Pursuit of glory was our ardent need.

Anything goes for everyone’s advancement,

The depths of earth I excavate,

Metal, gleaming, I amalgamate

For your enhancement.

18

The oath you gave me now forgotten,

You forgot that I it was who chose you;

For your pleasure you think the crown begotten,

And who is Lord, who subject, misconstrue.

My statutes with a sword you’ve smashed,

All rights to silence you’ve reduced

And ordered truth to feel ashamed.

You’ve cleared a way for depredations,

Appealed to God, but I was not named,

And treated me like abomination.

19

Procuring by sweat and blood

The fruit for food I planted,

Crumbs were shared for chewing cud,

And effort was not stinted;

But treasures will never you suffice!

Did they really fall so short in price

That off my back you tore my shirt?

Shower with gifts your favorite kiss-ass!

And the lady whose honor suffered mishaps!

Is gold the only God to whom you now revert?

Have you recognized gold as your God?

20

An insignia devised for excellence

You awarded as a badge to arrogance.

A sword sharpened for an enemy’s defense

You began to aim against innocence.

Troops as bulwark have been marshaled—

Do you lead them into splendid battle,

Humanity to punish?

You fight in bloody valleys,

So that the drunks in Athens

Shall, yawning, ‘A hero!’ admonish.

21

Villain, most horrid of all the villains …

You conjoined all atrocities and directed your stinger at me….

‘Die! Die, you, and a hundredfold!’—

The people declared….

22

O great man, in treachery abounding,

Hypocrite, blasphemer, flunkey!

Alone you give the world so resounding

An example, one for posterity.

A villain, Cromwell, I do you hold

Since with your power bold

Freedom’s stronghold you destroyed.

But by the generation from you they learned

How peoples can themselves be avenged:

You Charles, on trial, executed.

23

And this is the voice of liberty resounding to all the ends of the Earth….

To the veche115 the nation flocks;

The cast-iron throne