Batuschka.

The Sisters' Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

From yonder gilded minaret
Beside the steel-blue Neva
set,
I faintly catch, from time to time,
The sweet, aerial
midnight chime--
          "God save the
Tsar!"

Above the ravelins and the moats
Of the white citadel it
floats;
And men in dungeons far beneath
Listen, and pray, and
gnash their teeth--
          "God save
the Tsar!"

The soft reiterations sweep
Across the horror of their
sleep,
a term of endearment applied
to the Tsar in Russian
folk-song.
As if some daemon in his glee
Were mocking at
their misery--
          "God save the
Tsar!"

In his Red Palace over there,
Wakeful, he needs must hear
the prayer.
How can it drown the broken cries
Wrung from his
children's agonies?--
          "God
save the Tsar!"

Father they called him from of old--
Batuschka! . . . How
his heart is cold!
Wait till a million scourged men
Rise in
their awful might, and then--
         
God save the Tsar!