"Away with the song she is soaring, She surrenders herself to its stream, In the world there is no such sweet singing As that which we hear in a dream." His longest and most ambitious work was a kind of popular epic, _Who is Happy in Russia?_ written in short lines which have the popular ring and accent. Some peasants start on a pilgrimage to find out who is happy in Russia. They fly on a magic carpet, and interview representatives of the different classes of society, the pope, the landowner, the peasant woman, each new interview producing a whole series of stories, sometimes idyllic and sometimes tragic, and all showing their genius as intimate pictures of various phases of Russian life. Here, again, the analogy with Crabbe suggests itself, for Nekrasov's tales, taking into consideration the difference between the two countries, have a marked affinity, both in their subject matter, their variety, their stern realism, their pathos, their bitterness, and their observation of nature, with Crabbe's stories in verse. Two of Nekrasov's long poems tell the story in the form of reminiscence,--and here again the naturalness and appropriateness of the diction is perfect,--of the Russian women, Princess Volkonsky and Princess Trubetzkoy, who followed their husbands, condemned to penal servitude for taking part in the Decembrist rising, to Siberia. Here, again, Nekrasov strikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, all the more poignant from the absolute simplicity with which the tales are told. Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of the time and has only one rival, whom we shall describe presently. The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET (1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic, and all three remained aloof from political or social questions. Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy. The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo. "The world in shadow slipped away And, like a silent dream took flight, Like Adam, I in Eden lay Alone, and face to face with night." He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the dawn--