When Russia was pent and hopeless
And barred by every State
And the Russian a beast of the Forest
In the days of Peter the Great;
When the Turk was mighty, and Sweden
Held the way to the sea—
The Bear came out of the marshes.
And an angry Bear was he.

He was lean and shaggy and starving,
And his eyes were reddened and dim;
But Sweden found with a shattered fleet
That the Bear had learned to swim.
The church bells rang on the Neva,
The peasants conquered the fen;
And Peter went to his hard-earned rest—
And the Bear went to his den.

In the days when the Great Napoleon,
His strength and his army whole,
Set out for the heart of Russia,
The den of the Bear his goal,
He shifted his cubs to the forest,
To hunger the winter through,
And the wolves on the roads from Moscow
Could tell what a Bear would do.

In the days when the Turk, decaying,
Was backed by the nations all
To promise, and laugh at, the great Slav,
And ravish and rob the small,
The Bear came down through the passes,
From as far as Helsingfors,
And the Bear swam out on the Danube
Where he sank our monitors.

The Bear is a clumsy playmate;
The Bear is gentle and mild;
And he with a ring through his snuffling nose
Can be led by a little child.
The Bear is honest and faithful
As ever a dog can be;
But the Bear is a dangerous bear to meet
When an angry Bear is he.