From the Other Shore

My heart refuses to believe that this day will not come; it sinks at the thought of eternal separation. As if I will not see those streets through which I walked so often, full of youthful dreams; those houses so connected with memories, our Russian villages, our peasants, whom I remembered with love in the very south of Italy? It cannot be! Well, and if it is? Then I bequeath my toast to my children, and dying in a foreign land, I will preserve the faith in the future of the Russian people and will bless them from the distance of my voluntary exile!

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