James Clarence Mangan

Siberia

IN Siberia's wastes
   The ice-wind's breath
Woundeth like the toothed steel;
Lost Siberia doth reveal
   Only blight and death.

Blight and death alone.
   No Summer shines.
Night is interblent with Day.
In Siberia's wastes alway
   The blood blackens, the heart pines.

In Siberia's wastes
   No tears are shed,
For they freeze within the brain.
Nought is felt but dullest pain,
   Pain acute, yet dead;

Pain as in a dream,
   When years go by
Funeral-paced, yet fugitive,
When man lives, and doth not live.
   Doth not live -- nor die.

In Siberia's wastes
   Are sands and rocks
Nothing blooms of green or soft,
But the snow-peaks rise aloft
   And the gaunt ice-blocks.

And the exile there
   Is one with those;
They are part, and lie is part,
For the sands are in his heart,
   And the killing snows.

Therefore, in those wastes
   None curse the Czar.
Each man's tongue is cloven by
The North Blast, that heweth nigh
   With sharp scymitar.

And such doom each sees,
   Till, hunger-gnawn,
And cold-slain, he at length sinks there,
Yet scarce more a corpse than ere
   His last breath was drawn.