POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Let him build for me a house
Without doors or windows,
For now am I at the end of my life."
SONG OF THE COSSACK
Heavily hangs the rye
Bent to the trampled ground;
While brave men fighting die
Through blood the horses bound.
Under the white-stemmed tree
A Cossack bold is slain—
They lift him tenderly
Into the ruined grain.
Someone has borne him there,
Someone has put in place
A scarlet cloth, with prayer,
Over the up-turned face.
Softly a girl has come—
Dove-like she looks; all gray—
Stares at the soldier dumb
And, crying, goes away.
Then, swift, another maid—
Ah, how unlike she is!—
[26]
