The heroic poetry of the Caucasian mountaineers is largely taken up with recitals of their freebooting exploits and achievements in the valley of Georgia, usually in the form of songs or ballads, which all breathe the same fierce, proud, cruel spirit. In the diction there is very little art. Rhyme, although it is known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. I have heard an Avarian mother chant amid her sobs an improvised but rhythmical lament over the body of her dead child. Rude as Caucasian poetry is, however, in construction, fierce and warlike as it generally is in spirit, one meets occasionally in Caucasian songs with the most delicate and graceful conceptions. Contrast, for example, "The Song of Khamzat" or "The Death-Song of the Chechense" with the following bit of Avarian poetry, which I have taken the liberty of calling: GLAMOUR. Come out of doors, O mother! and see what a wonder is here: Up through the snows of the mountain the flowers of spring appear. Come out on the roof, O mother! and see how along the ravine The glacier-ice is covered with the springtime's leafy green! There are no flowers, my daughter: 'tis only because thou art young That blossoms from under the mountain-snows appear to thee to have sprung. There is no grass on the glacier: the blades do not even start; But thou art in love, and the grass and flowers are springing in thy heart.