Classic Poem

Once, before a tribal meeting
Of the mountain throng,
Kazbék-hill with Shat-the-mountain
Wrangled loud and long.
“Have a care, Kazbék, my brother,”
Shat, the grey-haired, spoke;
“Not for naught hath human cunning
Bent thee to the yoke.
Man will build his smoky cabins
On thy hillside steep;
Up thy valley's deep recesses
Ringing axe will creep;
Iron pick will tear a pathway
To thy stony heart,
Delving yellow gold and copper
For the human mart.
Caravans, e'en now, are wending
O'er thy stately heights,
Where the mists and kingly eagles
Wheeled alone their flights.
Men are crafty; what though trying
Proved the first ascent!—
Many-peopled, mark, and mighty
Is the Orient.”

“Nay, I do not dread the Orient,”
Kazbék, answering, jeers;
“There mankind has spent in slumber
Just nine hundred years.
Look, where 'neath the shade of plane-trees
Sleepy Georgians gape,
Spilling o'er their broidered clothing
Foam of luscious grape!
See, 'mid wreaths of pipe-smoke, lying
On his flowered divan,
By the sparkling pearly fountain
Dozeth Teheran!
Lo! around Jerusalem's city,
Burned by God's command
Motionless, in voiceless stillness,
Deathlike, lies the land.

“Farther off, to shade a stranger,
Yellow Nilus laves,
Glowing in the glare of noonday,
Steps of royal graves.
Bedouins forget their sorties
For brocaded tents,
While they count the stars and sing of
Ancestral events.
All that there the vision greeteth
Sleeps in prized repose;
No! the East will ne'er subdue me!
Feeble are such foes!”
“Do not boast thyself so early,”
Answered ancient Shat;
“In the North, look! 'mid the vapours,
Something rises! What?”

Secretly the mighty Kazbék
At this warning shook,
And, in trouble, towards the nor'ward
Cast a hurried look.
As he looks in perturbation,
Filled with anxious care,
He beholds a strange commotion,
Hears a tumult there.
Lo! from Ural to the Danube,
To the mighty stream,
Tossing, sparkling in the sunlight,
Moving regiments gleam;
Glancing wave the white-plumed helmets
Like the prairie grass,
While, 'mid clouds of dust careering,
Flashing Uhlans pass.
Crowded close in serried phalanx
War battalions come;
In the van they bear the standards,
Thunders loud the drum;
Streaming forth like molten copper
Batteries, rumbling, bound;
Smoking just before the battle
Torches flare around;
Skilled in toils of stormy warfare,
Heading the advance,
See! a grey-haired general guides them,
Threat'ning in his glance.
Onwards move the mighty regiments
With a torrent's roar;
Terrible, like gathering storm-clouds,
East, due east, they pour.

Then, oppressed with dire forebodings,
Filled with gloomy dreams,
Strove Kazbék to count the foemen,
Failed to count their streams.
Glancing on his tribal mountains,
Sadly gloomed the hill;
Drew across his brows the mistcap,
And for aye was still.