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