Alexander Blok’s poems begin with an obvious patriotism and love for Russia, but an equal recognition of the suffering and turmoil of the years.

“Russia, my beggarly Russia,

your grey huts in their clusters,

your songs set to the wind’s measure

touch me like love’s first tears.”

“If they seduce you and deceive you,

you’ll not be broken or collapse;

though suffering may overshadow

the beauty of your face perhaps…”

The unrest might overshadow Russia’s beauty, but Blok seemed to believe that nothing essential about the country, nothing that he loved, would change.

His poems, through the years, grow somewhat darker. He foretells the apocalypse, war, villages burning. In such times, when peasants were hopeless and starving and the government brutally oppressed protesters, it would have been impossible not to feel this darkness. In the face of so much loss, death, and suffering, even the revolutionaries did not seem hopeful or idealistic but rather desperate.

“How often we sit weeping—you

and I—over the life we lead!

My friends, if you only knew

The darkness of the days ahead!”

However, his attitude toward the country never changes.

“Centuries pass, villages flame,

are stunned by war and civil war.

My country, you are still the same,

Tragic, beautiful as before.

How long must the mother wail?”

It remains beautiful, despite all this horror. He still loves it unquestioningly, although there is something of despair in the final line—this poem was written in 1916, later than most of the others we read; at that point, patriotism for the war had evaporated as it dragged on and living conditions became worse and worse for those who survived. But even this catastrophe was not enough for Blok to succumb completely to despair or anger. Russia, in the midst of this, is “tragic”—but still beautiful.