Mikhail Lermontov
Motherland (1841)
My motherland I love; still love of mine is odd!
It’s strangely settled in my inquiring soul:
The glory that’s been highly paid by blood,
And full of proud trust its quiet dole,
And all the old days’ legends of the country’s might
Do not produce in me a comforting delight.
But I do love, not knowing why, love these
Vast steppes with their cold and lasting silence,
The beautiful wild woods and fields alliance,
Floods of the rivers similar to seas.
I like to ride by a country-road in a wagon,
And peering slowly through shadows of night
In looking for a lodging, and the way on
See a distant villages’ sad twinkling light.
I like the smoke of a burnt stubble-field
A strangle of carts at lodging in a dale,
And on a hill among the yellow wheat
A couple of birches yet of no avail.
With joy unknown to some another
I contemplate a filled up barn,
A hut with a thatched roof, and rather
Enjoy carved shutters of the one.
And in the time of festive ramping
Till the midnight I’m very glad
To look at a dance with whistles and stamping,
To dashing peasants tipsy chat.
(Vyacheslav Chistyakov,
https://stihi.ru/2011/07/30/4183)
