А. Пушкин. Клеветникам России. English. Т. Рыжова

 To the Slanderers of Russia

What are you shouting there, world orators,
Why do you threaten Russia with anathemas?
What made you such indignant – Lithuanian rise?
Calm down: this is Slavs’ question – only theirs,
Their old domestic, weighed by fate, affairs,
The question not for you to realize.

For long these tribes are kept asunder,
And not a single time in fight
Their places changed beneath the thunder:
Now won this  - and  now  that side.
Who will withstand in this unequal quarrel –
Conceited Pole or faithful Ross?
Will Slavic streams to the Russian sea all flow?
Or it’ll get dry? – One cannot know.

Leave us alone: you’ve never read them –
These tables shed by blood so awesome,
You won’t perceive in all your life
This old long-lasting family strife.
Dumb seem to you both Prague and Kremlin.
You just enjoy without a goal
That struggle – desperate and daring,
And, what is more, you hate us all…
Why so? Reply: maybe the reason now
Is that those days in Moscow on burning ruins
We did not bent to the insolent power
Of him before whom you just quaked with fears?
Or maybe just because we cast him -
The idol weighing heavily upon all nations?
And paid with blood,  just as we are accustomed,
For Europe’s peace, its honor  and salvation?

You threaten us with words – try turning them in deeds.
Or do you think the ancient bogatyr is on his couch at peace,
No longer having power at all to mount his Turkish bayonet?
Or has the order of the Russian Tsar got powerless?
Or is the quarreling with Europe somewhat new to us?
Do Russians seem forget the victories they used to get?
Or are we few? Or right from Perm to the Tavrida, (Crimea)
From Finnish icy cliffs to burning-hot Kolchida,
From Kremlin ready and alert,
To steadfast walls of ancient China
With bristling steel in bright array
Won’t Russian land rise up united?
Why! Send us, then, orators vagrant,
Your sons, whose wickedness you praise:
In Russian fields some room for them is vacant
Among familiar to their nation graves.