My father and my mother, too! They may be dead by now; To tell the truth, it wouldn't do To grieve them anyhow. If one of them is living, say I'm bad at writing home, and they Have sent us to the front, you see,-- And that they needn't wait for me. We had a neighbour, as you know, And you remember I And she ... How very long ago It is we said good-bye! She won't ask after me, nor care, But tell her ev'rything, don't spare Her empty heart; and let her cry;-- To her it doesn't signify." The language is the language of ordinary everyday conversation. Every word the officer says might have been said by him in ordinary life, and there is not a note that jars; the speech is the living speech of conversation without being slang: and the result is a poignant piece of poetry. Another perhaps still more beautiful and touching example is the cradle-song which a mother sings to a Cossack baby, in which again every word has the native savour and homeliness of a Cossack woman's speech, and every feeling expressed is one that she would have felt. A third example is "Borodino," an account of the famous battle told by a veteran, as a veteran would tell it. Lermontov's fishes never talk like big whales. All Russian poets have this gift of reality of conception and simplicity of treatment in a greater or a lesser degree; perhaps none has it in such a supreme degree as Lermontov. The difference between Pushkin's style and Lermontov's is that, when you read Pushkin, you think: "How perfectly and how simply that is said! How in the world did he do it?" You admire the "magic hand of chance." In reading Lermontov at his simplest and best, you do not think about the style at all, you simply respond to what is said, and the style escapes notice in its absolute appropriateness. Thus, what Matthew Arnold said about Byron and Wordsworth is true about Lermontov--there are moments when Nature takes the pen from his hand and writes for him.