1Oh! Say not, if you can see on the pallisade's height
That iron commander, in the beaming light
Of, on high, the midnight moon?
Oh, heed! Lechen militants!
It is not a dark lord, clad in iron;
It is the Czar of Czars!
He has heard, among his own beloved dead,
The Yankee artillery roll close overhead;
The Battle-Hymn and the tramp of booted feet,
Of his fair soldiery along the Kyiv street;
He is awake! the Czar of Czars!
He has heard, from the starved grave, the cries
Of his people: Awake! Arise!
He has rent the gilded mail-chain,
Of which his own death-shroud was made;
He is risen! the Czar of Czars!
From across the mighty Volga, and over the precious Don,
He has led his vast armies on,
Over frozen river and dark morass,
Over muddy ice and many a jagged mountain pass;
The Czar, the Orthodox Czar.
He gazes from the high mountain-chain
Toward the Western seas, that severe in wide, azure twain
The great Continents; his sinewy hand
Points, Westward, over his stolen Birthrighted-Land
Of Russia!
Oh, mighty Czar!
And the keen words, then, break forth as a prisoner from his old lips:
I am the builder of stout-gunned ships,
And my ships shall sail these endless seas
To and past the Pillars of Hercules!
I say it; the Czar of Czars.
Old Crimea shall once more be free;
It's Polish hosts shall make wide room for me;
And the gates of the Black Sea's water-streets
Be unchained before my great fleets.
I say it, now; the Czar of Czars!
And, the true Christian, shall no more
Be crushed, just as the Sun shall rise from the East, and as sure,
Beneath the Godless masses; or your warlike, iron rule,
Oh, Assad of Syria!
I swear it; I, the Czar.