The preface of her first book of poems is suggestive of her attitude throughout life. To thee, O my Ukraine, my dearest, unfortunate mother, My songs will be raised first of all. They will be solemn and quietly sounding. Each song will flow forth from my heart. Naturally it is possible to find in this first collection poems that show the influence of the authors whom she had read and there are slight touches of regret that she cannot do more for her country. There are moments of disillusionment and of weakness but more and more she found herself and expressed her desires to be useful to her country in whatever way was possible. There is little direct mention of her personal afflictions but we can to some extent imagine that they had much to do with her fits of pessimism. It was not long before she became more interested in social problems and she thought hard and earnestly about the position of Ukraine. She was aware of the fact that all was dark and confusion around her and that the future of the country could not be secured by words alone. Thus she writes, The fellahin and pariahs are happy. Their minds and thoughts are swaddled in repose. In us the fire of a Titan burns.... For we are paralytics with fierce blazing eyes, Are great in spirit but in strength are frail, We feel the wings of eagles on our backs, While fetters binding us to earth ne’er fail. That was her judgment on most of the intellectuals of her day and on the fate of Ukraine. Yet she never wavered in her words of hope and consolation and the very titles of such poems as _Contra spem spero_, (_I hope against hope_), show the confidence that she had that right would finally conquer and they refer to the fate of her people as well as to her own physical condition. Yet even in her first volumes we find specimens of that kind of song which she was to do more as time went on. Thus in the _Iphigenia in Tauris_ she makes the priestess say that she is willing for the glory of her country to live “without glory, without family, without a name” if only she can assist in its triumph. Here Lesya Ukrainka turns to literature to find illustrations that might be impossible to draw from the present conditions in view of the censorship. It is often forgotten that the scene of the play of Euripides was laid in the Crimea. Orestes and his friend had come to Ukraine and its neighborhood to recover the statue of Artemis and undoubtedly the poetess was thinking of this in choosing her theme.