I

White Guard, your path is set noble and high:
Black muzzles—your breast and temple defy.

Godly and white is the cause you fight for:
White is your body—in sands to lie.

That is no flock of swans in the sky there:
Saintly the White Guard host sails by there,
White, as a vision, to fade and die there...

One last glimpse of a world that's gone:
Manliness — Daring — Vendee — Don.

11 March 1918

II

Those spared—will die, those fallen—rise from under.
Then come the sons, remembering days far gone:
—And where were you ? —The words will roll like thunder,
The answer roll like thunder: —On the Don!

—What did you do? —We bore with grief and cruelty,
Then laid us down to sleep, our last strength gone.
And in the dictionary, over: Duty,
The grandsons, looking back, will write: the Don.

17 March 1918

III

Breakers and manliness—laws burst asunder!
Breach on the Don. We are lost. —Going under.
Winds of time! —to our sons' own sons
Pass the sad tidings on:

Aye! For the wall on the Don is shattered!
Aye! For the White Guard is lost and scattered.
But, as we leave wives, daughters, sons,
But, as we cross the Don,

Flying—a white flock, doomed to perish,
Dying—we died for the huts we cherished!

Sign of the Cross by the last church passed,
Unto the ages—the White Guard host.

Moscow, Feast of the Annunciation 1918
—days of the breakthrough on the Don—