201 . Russia

IMPLACABLE as are thy arctic floes;

Grim and gigantic as thy mountain height;

Girt with thy pines for spindles and the light

Of pale auroras for thy stars; to those

Who know thee not thou seem’st as one who goes

Unvex’d by Wrong, nor swerves to help the Right,

A grey Lachesis of the Northern night,

Stark as thy steppes and colder than thy snows.

But we—we know thee now, Ally and Friend!

True as thy Baltic Spars and tried by fire,

Thy seeming coldness hides a courage high,

A stern resolve to do, endure and die,

So that the holy cause of thy desire—

Thy cause and ours—shall triumph in the end.