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Apollon Maikov
41
"UPON THIS WILD HEADLAND"
Upon this wild headland, crowned meanly with indigent
rushes
And withering bush and the pitiful green of the pine-
trees,
The aged Meniskos, a sorrowful fisherman laid
His son who had perished. His youth the sea, motherwise,
nurtured,
That sea whose wide lap took him back, who resistlessly
bore him
In death, and who carefully carried the young body shore-
ward.
Then mourning Meniskos went forth, and beneath the
great willow
He dug him a grave, a plain stone he set for a mark on
the cliff-side,
And hung overhead a coarse net he had woven of
willow,—
A fisherman's wreath to be poverty's bitter memento.
