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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. |