Edna Dean Proctor

We hail thee, we crown thee! To east and to west God keep thee the purest, the noblest, the best; While all thy domain with a people He fills As free as thy winds and as firm as thy hills!

Ah! what a day when all the way To Marmora's sunny sea— From Finland's snows to fields of rose— Shall Holy Russia be!

Have you heard how Holy Russia Is guarded, night and day, By saints gone home to the world of light, Yet watching her realm for aye?

And the chants, and the groans of the dying, as one, Went up to the Lord when the carnage was done.

Your King may be powerful—a brother I'll be— But vassal to none on the land or the sea!

And there he reclines with the air of a god, As if armies and kingdoms would fall at his nod; On his brow the imperial borla is bound, Its crimson fringe drooping his temples around, And above float the plumes of that bird of the skies …

O Troitsa's altar is divine,— St. Sergius! hear our prayers! And Kiëff, Olga's lofty shrine, The name of "The Holy" bears; But Moscow blends all rays in one,— They are the stars, and she the sun!

And Pole and Tartar and haughty Gaul Flee, dismayed, from the Kremlin wall.