Mtsyri

A vague longing for his native home and for loved ones—his short but happy childhood—overwhelms him. He breathes with the thought of escape, and one day he manages it. For three days he wanders in the open, without food or water, but he’s happy because he is free. After these intoxicating days he understands that he can no longer live in a monk’s cell, devoting himself to asceticism.

This work is Lermontov’s hymn to his beloved Georgia—its powerful spirit and unshakable will.

Not long ago,
Where, merging, шумят,
Embracing, like two sisters,
The streams of Aragvi and Kura,
There was a monastery.
Because of the mountain
And now the passerby sees
The pillars of fallen gates,
And towers, and the church vault;
But under it
No fragrant smoke rises from censers,
No singing is heard in the late hour
Of praying monks for us.
Now only one gray old man,
A guard of the ruins—half alive—
Forgotten by people and by death,
Sweeps dust from gravestones,
Whose inscription tells
Of the glory of the past—and about how,
Bowed down by his crown,
Such-and-such a king, in such-and-such a year,
Gave his people to Russia...