Giordano

 

And Death did shriek: "Succumb!

Cry out! Lament! Be damning!

You see, with torch of fire

The villain's on his way!"

But at that fateful hour,

The hour when Truths were trampled,

'Gainst judges he played dumb:

His silence won the day.

 

"You're more afraid, I heard,

In spouting condemnation,

Than I on hearing, still,

The sentence that you make!"

But they, of course, preferred

To yield to the temptation

To do the people's will:

"To the scaffold! To the stake!"

 

All in this earthly vale

Must meet a common ending,

And no one dared derail

The arrows' flight so straight.

And into a pit deep down,

Are seen dark souls descending,

Their crosses and their crowns

Abandoned at the gate...

 

A Nolan he is still -

His concepts go on living

In countless worlds about

With radiant beauty bright.

But ignorance has killed

So many other victims,

Attempting to snuff out

Such thought's own heavenly light!..

 

Translation from Russian to English by John Woodsworth