Aleksandr Pushkin

Oh, Rome -- a proud land of lechery, of evil,
It'll come the trial’s day -- a hammer and an anvil.
I see the end of your 'eternal' reign:
Your crown, in the dust, will never rise again.
The youthful nations -- suns of bloody battle --
Will raise the sword above your people-cattle,
Just leaving after them the mountains and seas,
And flooding all your land as waters of the streams.
The Rome will fall; it will be covered by a darkness;
And, just a traveler, while seeing stones' vastness,
And lost in gloomy thoughts, at last will give a yell:
"By freedom Rome’s bred, by slavery it’s felled."

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 1999
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, February 2000