The sea is agitated at midnight: mists are borne in the darkness. God shows to Ígor a way out of the land of the Pólovtses into the country of Russia to his father’s golden throne. The evening twilight has gone out. Ígor sleeps; Ígor is awake: Ígor in his thought measures the plains from the great Don to the small Donéts. His steed is ready at midnight. Ovlúr whistles beyond the river, gives a sign to the Prince,--Prince Ígor will be no more! The earth resounded, the grass rustled, the Pólovts’ tents trembled. But Ígor raced like an ermine in the reeds, like a white duck over the water; he jumped on a swift steed, dismounted as a light-footed wolf, and hastened to the plain of the Donéts; and as a falcon flew through the mist, killing geese and swans for his breakfast and dinner and supper. When Ígor flew as a falcon, Ovlúr raced as a wolf, shaking off the cold dew, for they had worn out their swift steeds. The Donéts spoke: “Prince Ígor, great is your honour, and the grief to Konchák, and joy to the Russian land!” Ígor spoke: “O Donéts, great is your honour, having rocked the Prince on your wave, having spread out for him the green grass on your silver banks, having cloaked him with warm mists under green trees. You have guarded him as a duck on the water, as a gull on the waves, as a mallard in the air. Not thus the river Stúgna[97]: though having a scanty stream, it has swallowed other brooks, and has spread the floods over the bushes. To the young Prince Rostisláv the Dnieper has closed its dark banks. Rostisláv’s mother weeps for the young Prince. The flowers faded in their sorrow, and the trees bent in anguish to the ground.” It is not magpies that are in a flutter: Gza and Konchák ride in Ígor’s track. Then the raven did not croak, the jackdaws were silent, the magpies did not chatter, only leaped from branch to branch. The woodpeckers indicated the road to the river by their pecking; the nightingales announced the day by their merry song. Said Gza to Konchák: “Since the falcon is flying to his nest, let us shoot the fledgling[98] with our golden darts.” Said Konchák to Gza: “Since the falcon is flying to his nest, let us enmesh the fledgling with a fair maiden!” And Gza spoke to Konchák: “If we enmesh him with a fair maiden, we shall have neither the young falcon, nor the fair maiden, and the birds will attack us in the Pólovts plain.” XIV Boyán has said: “Hard it is for you, O head, to be without your shoulders; ill it is for you, O body, to be without a head.” Even so is the Russian land without Ígor.