Once, before a tribal meeting Of the mountain throng, Kazbek-hill with Shat-the-mountain[5] Wrangled loud and long. “Have a care, Kazbek, my brother,” Shat, the grey-haired, spoke; “Not for naught hath human cunning Bent thee to the yoke. Man will build his smoky cabins On thy hillside steep; Up thy valley’s deep recesses Ringing axe will creep; Iron pick will tear a pathway To thy stony heart, Delving yellow gold and copper For the human mart. Caravans, e’en now, are wending O’er thy stately heights, Where the mists and kingly eagles Wheeled alone their flights. Men are crafty; what though trying Proved the first ascent, Many-peopled, mark, and mighty Is the Orient.” “Nay, I do not dread the Orient,” Kazbek, answering, jeers; “There mankind has spent in slumber Just nine hundred years. Look, where ’neath the shade of plane trees Sleepy Georgians gape, Spilling o’er their broidered clothing Foam of luscious grape! See, ’mid wreaths of pipe-smoke, lying On his flowered divan, By the sparkling pearly fountain Dozeth Teheran! “Lo! around Jerusalem’s city, Burned by God’s command, Motionless, in voiceless stillness, Death-like, lies the land. “Farther off, to shade a stranger, Yellow Nilus laves, Glowing in the glare of noonday, Steps of royal graves. Bedouins forget their sorties For brocaded tents, While they count the stars and sing of Ancestral events. All that there the vision greeteth Sleeps in prized repose; No! the East will ne’er subdue me; Feeble are such foes!” “Do not boast thyself so early,” Answered ancient Shat; “In the North, look! ’mid the vapours, Something rises! What?” Secretly the mighty Kazbek At this warning shook, And, in trouble, towards the nor’ward Cast a hurried look. As he looks, in perturbation, Filled with anxious care, He beholds a strange commotion, Hears a tumult there. Lo! from Ural to the Danube, To the mighty stream, Tossing, sparkling in the sunlight, Moving regiments gleam; Glancing wave the white-plumed helmets Like the prairie grass, While, ’mid clouds of dust careering, Flashing Uhlans pass. Crowded close in serried phalanx War battalions come; In the van they bear the standards, Thunders loud the drum; Streaming forth like molten copper Batteries, rumbling, bound; Smoking just before the battle Torches flare around; Skilled in toils of stormy warfare, Heading the advance, See! a grey-haired general guides them, Threat’ning is his glance. Onwards move the mighty regiments With a torrent’s roar; Terrible, like gathering storm-clouds, East, due east, they pour.