I will quote as an example of this one of his most famous poems. It is called “The Testament,” and it is the utterance of a man who has been mortally wounded in battle. “I want to be alone with you,[3] A moment quite alone. The minutes left to me are few, They say I’ll soon be gone. And you’ll be going home on leave, Then tell ... but why? I do believe There’s not a soul, who’ll greatly care To hear about me over there. And yet if some one asks you, well, Let us suppose they do-- A bullet hit me here, you’ll tell,-- The chest,--and it went through. And say I died and for the Tsar, And say what fools the doctors are;-- And that I shook you by the hand, And thought about my native land. My father and my mother, there! They may be dead by now; To tell the truth, I wouldn’t care 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. They’ve got 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 words of this poem are the words of familiar conversation; they are exactly what the soldier would say in such circumstances. There is not a single literary or poetical expression used. And yet the effect in the original is one of poignant poetical feeling and consummate poetic art. I know of no other language where the thing is possible; because if you translate the Russian by the true literary equivalents, you would have to say: “I would like a word alone with you, old fellow,” or “old chap,”[4] or something of that kind; and I know of no English poet who has ever been able to deal successfully (in poetry) with the speech of everyday life without the help of slang or dialect. What is needed for this are the Russian temperament and the Russian language. I will give another instance of what I mean. There is a Russian poet called Krilov, who wrote fables such as those of La Fontaine, based for the greater part on those of Æsop. He wrote a version of what is perhaps La Fontaine’s masterpiece, “Les Deux Pigeons,” which begins thus: “Two pigeons, like two brothers, lived together. They shared their all in fair and wintry weather. Where the one was the other would be near, And every joy they shared and every tear. They noticed not Time’s flight. Sadness they knew; But weary of each other never grew.”