<p>440. EXEGI MONUMENTUM
<a l:href="#c_469"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>«No hands have wrought my monument; no weedswill hide nation's footpath to its site.Tsar Alexander's column it exceeds in splendid insubmissive height.«Not all of me is dust. Within my song,safe from the worm, my spirit will survive,and my sublunar fame will dwell as long as there is one last bard alive.«Throughout great Rus' my echoes will extend,and all will name me, all tongues in her use:the Slavs' proud heir, the Finn, the Kalmuk, friend of steppes, the yet untamed Tunguz.«And to the people long shall I be dearbecause kind feelings did my lyre extoll,invoking freedom in an age of fear, and mercy for the broken soul».Obey thy God, and never mind, О Muse,the laurels or the stings: make it thy ruleto be unstirred by praise as by abuse, and do not contradict the fool.<1944><p>441. THE UPAS TREE
<a l:href="#c_470"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Deep in the desert's misery,far in the fury of the sand,there stands the awesome Upas Treelone watchman of a lifeless land.The wilderness, a world of thirst,in wroth engendered it and filledits every root, every accursedgrey leafstalk with a sap that killed.Dissolving on the midday sunthe poison oozes through its bark,and freezing when the day is donegleams thick and gem-like in the dark.No bird flies near, no tiger creeps;alone the whirlwind, wild and black,assails the tree of death and sweepsaway with death upon its back.And though some roving cloud may stainwith glancing drops those leaden leaves,the dripping of a poisoned rainis all the burning sand receives.But man sent man with one proud looktowards the tree, and he was gone,the humble one, and there he tookthe poison and returned at dawn.He brought the deadly gum; with ithe brought some leaves, a withered bough,While rivulets of icy sweatran slowly down his livid brow.He came, he fell upon a mat,and reaping a poor slave's reward,died near the painted hut where sathis now unconquerable lord.The king, he soared his arrows truein poison, and beyond the plainsdispatched those messengers and slewhis neighbors in their own domains.<1944>
