My messengers were furnace-harden'd arrows.
Replied the Tsar, our country's hope and glory:
Of a truth, thou little lad, and peasant's bantling!
In thieving thou art skill'd and giving answers;
For thy answers and thy thieving I'll reward thee
With a house upon the windy plain constructed
Of two pillars high, surmounted by a cross-beam.

iii.

O thou field of my delight so fair and verdant!
Thou scene of all my happiness and pleasure!
O how charmingly Nature hath array'd thee
With the soft green grass and juicy clover,
And with corn-flowers blooming and luxuriant.
One thing there is alone, that doth deform thee;
In the midst of thee, O field, so fair and verdant!
A clump of bushes stands--a clump of hazels,
Upon their very top there sits an eagle,
And upon the bushes' top--upon the hazels,
Compress'd within his claw he holds a raven,
And its hot blood he sprinkles on the dry ground;
And beneath the bushes' clump--beneath the hazels,
Lies void of life the good and gallant stripling;
All wounded, pierc'd and mangled is his body.
As the little tiny swallow or the chaffinch,
Round their warm and cosey nest are seen to hover,
So hovers there the mother dear who bore him;
And aye she weeps, as flows a river's water;
His sister weeps as flows a streamlet's water;