2

The wind is a whirl, the snow is a dance.
In the night twelve men advance.

Black, narrow rifle-straps,
Cigarettes, tilted caps.

A convict's stripes would fit their backs.
Fire marks their nightly tracks.

Freedom, ekh, freedom —
Unhallowed, unblessed!
Trah-tah-tah! ...

Fire blazes upon their track
Their rifle-straps are gleaming black.

March to the revolution's pace,
We've a fierce enemy to face.

More daring, friends, take aim, the lot!
At Holy Russia let's fire a shot.

At hutted Russia,
Fat-rumped and solid,
Russia, the stolid!

Ekh, ekh, unhallowed, unblessed. ...

9

The city's roar is far away,
Black silence broods on Neva's brink
No more police! We can be gay,
Comrades, without a drop to drink.

A bourgeois, a lonely mourner,
His nose tucked in his ragged fur,
Stands lost and idle at the corner,
Tagged by a cringing, mangy cur.

The bourgeois like a hungry mongrel, —
A silent question, — stands and begs;
The old world like a kinless mongrel
Stands there, its tail between its legs. ...

11

And the twelve, unblessed, uncaring,
Still go marching on,
Ripe for death and daring,
Pitying none.

On, with rifles lifted,
At the hidden enemy.
Through deaf alleys where the snow is sifted,
Where the lonely tempest tosses free.
Onward, where the snow has drifted
Clutching at the marcher's knee.

The red flag
Flaunts in their faces.

Steady beat
Their sounding paces.

Grimly followed
Are their traces.

Ruthlessly the storm-wind smites
Days and nights.

Forward, forward, the thundering beat
Of the workers' marching feet.