<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408678" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Mostly Slavonic</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.—<br>Peter Michaelov</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was Peter the Barbarian put an apron in his bag<br>And rolled up the honoured bundle that Australians call a swag;<br>And he tramped from Darkest Russia, that it might be dark no more,<br>Dreaming of a port, and shipping, as no monarch dreamed before.<br>Of a home, and education, and of children staunch and true,<br>Like my father in the fifties—and his name was Peter, too.<br>(He could build a ship—or fiddle, out of wood, or bark, or hide—.<br>Sail one round the world and play the other one at eventide.) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Russia’s Peter (not my father) went to Holland in disguise,<br>Where he laboured as a shipwright underneath those gloomy skies;<br>Later on he went to England (which the Kaiser now—condemns)<br>Where he studied as a ship-smith by old Deptford on the Thames—<br>And no doubt he knew the rope-walk—(and the rope’s end too, he knew)—<br>Learned to build a ship and sail it—learned the business through and through.<br>And I’d like to say my father mastered navigation too.<br>(He was born across in Norway, educated fairly well,<br>And he grafted in a ship-yard by the Port of Arundel.) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“Peter Michaelov” (not Larsen) his work was by no means done;<br>For he learned to make a ploughshare, and he learned to make a gun.<br>Russian soldiers must have clothing, so he laboured at the looms,<br>And he studied, after hours, building forts and building booms.<br>He would talk with all and sundry, merchants and adventurers—<br>Whaling men from Nova Scotia, and with ancient mariners.<br>Studied military systems (of which Austria’s was the best).<br>Hospitals and even bedlams—class distinctions and the rest. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was nothing he neglected that was useful to be known—<br>And he even studied Wowsers, who had no creed of his own.<br>And, lest all that he accomplished should as miracles appear,<br>It must always be remembered he’d a secret Fund for Beer.<br>When he tramped to toil and exile he was only twenty-five,<br>With a greater, grander object than had any man alive.<br>And perhaps the lad was bullied, and was sad for all we know—<br>Though it isn’t very likely that he’d take a second blow.<br>He had brains amongst the brainless, and, what that thing means I knew,<br>For before I found my kingdom, I had slaved in workshops too. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But they never dreamed, the brainless, boors that used to sneer and scoff,<br>That the dreamy lad beside them—known as “Dutchy Mickyloff”—<br>Was a genius and a poet, and a Man—no matter which—<br>Was the Czar of all the Russias!—Peter Michaelovich. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Sweden struck ere he was ready—filled the land with blood and tears—<br>But he broke the power of Sweden though it took him nine long years.<br>For he had to train his army—He was great in training men—<br>And no foreign foe in Russia have had easy times since then. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then the Port, as we must have one—His a work of mighty drains—<br>(Ours of irrigation channels—or it should be, on the plains).<br>So he brought from many countries strong adventures with brains.<br>It was marshes to horizons, it was pestilential bogs;<br>It was stoneless, it was treeless, so he brought Norwegian logs. <br>’Twas a land without a people, ’twas a land without a law;<br>But the lonely Gulf of Finland heard the axe and heard the saw;<br>He compelled the population to that desert land and lone—<br>Shifted them by tens of thousands as we’ll have to shift our own.<br>He imported stone and mortar (he supplied the labouring gang),<br>Brought his masons from all Russia—let the other towns go hang;<br>Brought his carpenters from Venice—they knew how to make a port!<br>Till he heard the church bells ringing in the town of Petersfort!<br>Brought his shipbuilders from Holland, built his navy feverishly—<br>Till the Swedish fleet was shattered and the Baltic routes were free,<br>And his Port was on the Neva and his Ships were on the sea! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Petrograd upon the Neva! and the Man who saw it through!—<br>Stately Canberra on the Cotter!—and the men who build it too! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Russian Peter was “inhuman,” so the wise historians say—<br>What’s the use of being human in a land like ours to-day,<br>Till a race of stronger people wipe the Sickly Whites away?<br>Let them have it, who will have it—those who do not understand—<br>“Peter lived and died a savage”—but he civilized the land.<br>And, as it is at present, so ’twas always in the past—<br>’Twas his nearest and his dearest that broke Peter’s heart at last. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>He was more than half a heathen, if historians are true;<br>But he used to whack his missus as a Christian ought to do—<br>And he should have done it sooner—but that trouble isn’t new.<br>We’d have saved a lot of bother had we whacked our women, too.<br>Peter more than whacked his subjects, ere the change was brought about.<br>And, in some form or another, we shall have to use the knout,<br>If we wish to build a nation—else we’ll have to do without.<br>And be wretched slaves and exiles, homeless in the Southern Sea,<br>When an Asiatic Nation hath “rough hewn” our destiny. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.—<br>The Brandenburgers</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Things have been mixed up in Europe till there’s nothing in a name,<br>So it doesn’t really matter whence the Brandenburgers came;<br>But they did no pioneering as our fathers did of old—<br>Only bullied, robbed and murdered till they bought the land with gold.<br>And they settled down in Prussia to the bane of Germany,<br>With a spike upon the helmet where three brazen balls should be.<br>And they swaggered, swigged and swindled, and by bullying held sway,<br>And they blindly inter-married till they’re madmen to this day.<br>And the lovely nights in Munich are as memories of the dead;<br>Night is filled with nameless terrors, day is filled with constant dread.<br>But Bavaria the peaceful, ere the lurid star is set,<br>She shall lead her neighbours on to pluck the Prussian Eagles yet. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We’ll pass over little Denmark, as the brave historians can,<br>Austria suffered at Sadowa, France was sorry at Sedan.<br>And for England’s acquiescence in the crime she suffers too.<br>Meanwhile Denmark drained her marshes, planted grain and battled through.<br>(We, who never knew what war is—who had gold without the pain—<br>Never locked a western river that might save a western plain.)<br>You may say the Danes were pirates, and so leave them on the shelf?<br>Given youth and men and money, I would pirate some myself!<br>Why should I be so excited for another nation’s pains?<br>I am prejudiced and angry, for my forefathers were Danes.<br>What have I to do with nations? Or the battle’s lurid stars?—<br>I am Henry, son of Peter, who was Peter, son of Lars;<br>Lars the son of Nils—But never mind from whence our lineage springs—<br>Yes, my forefathers wore helmets, but their helmets wore the wings—<br>(There’s a feather for your bonnet, there is unction for your souls!)<br>And the wings bore us to England, and Australia and the Poles.<br>What did we for little Denmark? Well, we sent our thousands through;<br>But, without the guns or money, what could Scandinavia do?<br>(It is true of some Australians, by the sea or sandwaste lone,<br>That they hold their father’s country rather dearer than their own.<br>But the track is plain before them, and they know who blazed the track,<br>To the work our Foreign Fathers did in Early Days, Out Back.<br>As a mate can do no mean thing in the bushman’s creed and song,<br>So a fellow’s father’s country [seems to me] can do no wrong.) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where was I? The Wrong of Denmark—or the chastening of her soul?<br>And perhaps her rulers “got it” where ’twas needed, on the whole.<br>’Twas the gentlemen of Poland crushed the spirit of the Pole,<br>Till he didn’t care which nation he was knouted by, and served;<br>So the gentlemen of Poland got wiped out, as they deserved.<br>Freedom shrieked (where was no freedom), and perhaps she shrieked for shame.<br>But let Kosciusko slumber—we’ve immortalised his name.<br>By the poets and the tenors have our tender souls been wrenched;<br>And, on many a suffering Christian, Polish Jews have been avenged. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>III.—<br>The Blue Danube</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where the skies are blue in winter by the Adriatic Sea,<br>And the summer skies are bluer even than our own can be;<br>In the shadow of a murder, weak from war and sore afraid;<br>By the ocean-tinted Danube stood the city of Belgrade.<br>Danube of the love-lit starlight, Danube of the dreamy waltz—<br>And Belgrade bowed down in ashes for her crimes and for her faults.<br>And the Prussian-driven Austrians who’d been driven oft before,<br>From Vienna’s cultured city marched reluctantly to war. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just to clear a path for Prussia, and her bloodhounds to the sea;<br>To the danger of the white world and the shame of Germany.<br>And a blacker fate than Belgium’s stared the Servians in the face.<br>But Belgrade had many soldiers of the old Slavonic race,<br>And her gun-crews manned the Danube, small and weak, but undismayed—<br>And Belgrade remembered Russia, and she called on her for aid. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And there came a secret message and a sign from Petrograd,<br>And the Servian arm was strengthened and the Servian heart was glad.<br>For the message in plain English, from the City of Snow,<br>Simply said: “I’m sending Ivan by the shortest route I know.”<br>So then Servia bid defiance, for she knew her friend was true;<br>And her guns along the Danube added blue smoke to the blue. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.—<br>The Peasantry</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who are these in rags and sheepskin, mangy fur-caps, matted hair?<br>Who are these with fearsome whiskers, black and wiry everywhere?<br>Who are these in blanket putties—canvas, rag, or green-hide shoes?<br>These with greasy bags and bundles grimy as the Russian flues?<br>Never song nor cheer amongst them, never cry of “What’s the News?”<br>Packed on cattle-trains and ox-carts, from the north and south and east;<br>Trudging from the marsh and forest, where the man is like the beast?<br>On the lonely railway platforms, bending round the village priest;<br>Here and there the village scholar, everywhere the country clowns?<br>They’re reservists of old Russia pouring in to Russian towns! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Women’s faces, gaunt and haggard, start and startle here and there,<br>White and whiter by the contrast to the shawls that hide their hair.<br>Black-shawled heads—the shrouds of sorrow! Eyes of Fear without a name!<br>Through the length and breadth of Europe, God! their eyes are all the same!<br>Famous Artist of the Present, wasting Art and wasting Life,<br>With your daughters for your models, or your everlasting wife—<br>With your kids for nymphs and fairies, or your Studies in “the Nood”—<br>Exercise imagination, and forget your paltry brood!<br>Take an old Bulgarian widow who has lost her little store,<br>Who has lost her sons in battle, paint her face, and call it “War.” </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.—<br>The Russian March</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Russian mist, and cold, and darkness, on the weary Russian roads;<br>And the sound of Russian swear-words, and the whack of Russian goads;<br>There’s the jerk of tightened traces and of taughtened bullock-chains—<br>’Tis the siege guns and the field guns, and the ammunition trains.<br>There’s the grind of tires unceasing, where the metal caps the clay;<br>And the “clock,” “clock,” “clock” of axles going on all night and day.<br>And the groaning undercarriage and the king pin and the wheel,<br>And the rear wheels, which are fore wheels, with their murd’rous loads of steel. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here and there the sound of cattle in the mist and in the sleet,<br>And the scrambling start of horses, and the ceaseless splosh of feet.<br>There’s the short, sharp, sudden order such as drivers give to slaves,<br>And a ceaseless, soughing, sighing, like the sound of sea-worn caves<br>When a gale is slowly dying and the darkness hides the waves,<br>And the ghostly phosphorescence flashes past the rocky arch<br>Like the wraiths of vanished armies. . . . It is Ivan on the march!<br>’Tis an army that is marching over other armies’ graves. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>“Halt!”<br>Clamp of bits and gathering silence—here and there a horse’s stamp;<br>Sounds of chains relaxed, and harness, like the teamsters come to camp.<br>Sounds of boxes moved in waggons, and of axes on a log—<br>And the wild and joyous barking of the regimental dog!<br>Sounds of pots and pans and buckets, and the clink of chain and hook—<br>And the blasphemous complaining of the Universal Cook.<br>Mist and mist and mellowed moonlight—night in more than ghostly robes;<br>And the lanterns and the camp fires like dim lights in frosted globes.<br>Silence deep of satisfaction. Sounds of laughter murmuring—<br>And the fragrance of tobacco! Are you Ivan? Ivan! Sing! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“I am Ivan! Yes, I’m Ivan, from the mist and from the mirk;<br>From the night of “Darkest Russia” where Oppression used to lurk—<br>And it’s many weary winters since I started Christian work;<br>But you feared the power of Ivan, and you nursed the rotten Turk.<br>Nurse him now! Or nurse him later, when his green-black blood hath laved<br>Wounds upon your hands and “honour” that his gratitude engraved;<br>Poison teeth on hands that shielded, poison fangs on hands that saved. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“No one doubted Ivan’s honour, no one doubted Ivan’s vow,<br>And the simple word of Ivan, none would dream of doubting now;<br>Yet you cherished, for your purpose, lies you heard and lies you spread,<br>And you triumphed for a Spectre over Ivan’s murdered dead!<br>You were fearful of my power in the rolling of my drums—<br>Now you tremble lest it fail me when To-morrow’s Morrow comes! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I had sought to conquer no land save what was by right my own—<br>I took Finland, I took Poland, but I left their creeds alone.<br>I, the greater, kindlier Tyrant, bade them live and showed them how—<br>They are free, and they are happy, and they’re marching with me now—<br>Marching to the War of Ages—marching to the War of Wars—<br>Hear the rebel songs of Warsaw! Hear the hymn of Helsingfors!<br>From the Danube to Siberia and the northern lights aflame.<br>Many freed and peaceful millions bless the day when Ivan came.<br>Travel through the mighty Russland—study, learn and understand<br>That my people are contented, for my people have their land. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“It was spring-time in Crimea, coming cold and dark and late,<br>When I signed the terms you offered, for I knew that I could wait;<br>When I bowed to stronger nations or to Universal Fate.<br>And the roofs of guiltless kinsmen blazed across my frontiers still,<br>Where the bloody hordes of Islam came to ravish, rob and kill;<br>And the lands were laid in ashes over many a field and hill;<br>And the groans of tortured peasants (dreaming yet and sullen-mad)—<br>And the shrieks of outraged daughters echoed still in Petrograd;<br>So we taught and trained and struggled, and we cursed the Western Powers,<br>While we suffered in the awful silence of your God, and ours. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“For the safety of the White Race and the memory of Christ,<br>Once again I marched on Turkey, only to be sacrificed,<br>To the Sea-Greed of the Nations, by the pandering of the weak,<br>And the treachery in Athens of the lying, cheating Greek.<br>Once again I forced the Balkans over snow and rock and moss,<br>Once again I saw the passes stormed with unavailing loss;<br>Once again I saw the Crescent reeling back before the Cross,<br>And the ships of many nations on the billows dip and toss. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once again my grey battalions, that had come with Christian aid,<br>Stood before Constantinople! Ah, you wish that we had stayed!<br>But the Powers raised their fingers, fearful even once again,<br>With the jealous fear that lingers even now (and shall remain);<br>Frigid as the polar regions were your hearts to others’ pain—<br>So I dragged my weary legions back to Russia—once again. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">“Thrice again they raised their fingers when I came with purpose true,<br>And I bowed and smirked and grovelled as I had been used to do.<br>Till my kin in bloody visions saw their homes in ruins laid<br>From the Danube to the ocean, from the ocean to Belgrade;<br>I was ready, for the last time, when they called on me for aid. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">From the Dardanelles, denied me, shall my outward march be set;<br>And you’ll see my fleets of commerce sail the Adriatic yet.” </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Grey Day<br>.<br>Daybreak on the world of Europe! Daybreak from the Eastern arch;<br>Hear the startling sound of bugles! Load and limber up and march!<br>On! for Ivan and his children, Peace and Rest and Morning Star!<br>On for Truth and Right and Justice. On for Russia and the Czar!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408678" data-title="Mostly Slavonic de Henry Lawson" data-description="I.— Peter Michaelov It was Peter the Barbarian put an apron in his bag And rolled up the honoured bundle that Australians call a swag; And he tramped from Darkest Russia, that it might be dark no more, Dreaming of a port, and shipping, as no mo..."></div> </div> </div>

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