Conclusion of Apostrophe
Despondent are the voices; drooped has merriment; [only?] blare the town trumpets.
Yaroslav, and all the descendants of Vseslav! The time has come to lower your banners, to sheathe your dented swords. For you have already departed from the ancestral glory; for with your feuds you started to draw the pagans onto the Russian land, onto the livelihood of Vseslav. Indeed, because of those quarrels violence came from the Kuman land.
In the seventh age of Troyan Vseslav cast lots for the damsel he wooed. By subterfuge, propping himself upon mounted troops, he vaulted toward the town of Kiev and touched with the staff [of his lance] the Kievan golden throne.
Like a fierce beast he lept away from them [the troops?], at midnight, out of Belgorod, having enveloped himself in a blue mist. Then a morn, he drove in his battle axes, opened the gates of Novgorod, shattered the glory of Yaroslav, [and] loped like a wolf to the Nemiga from Dudutki.
Vseslav's fate (concluded)
On the Nemiga the spread sheaves are heads, the flails that thresh are of steel, lives are laid out on the threshing floor, souls are winnowed from bodies. Nemiga's gory banks are not sowed goodly — sown with the bones of Russia's sons. Vseslav the prince judged men; as prince, he ruled towns; but at night he prowled in the guise of a wolf. Fron Kiev, prowling, he reached, before the cocks [crew], Tmutorokan. The path of Great Hors, as a wolf, prowling, he crossed. For him in Polotsk they rang for matins early at St. Sophia the bells; but he heard the ringing in Kiev. |