Oh, thankless Crimean land! in ruin laid
Are now the castles that were once your pride!
Here serpents and the owls from daylight hide,
And robbers arm them for the nightly raid.
...
In ruin are the spacious, splendid halls
With frozen forest of white columns where
The Tartar Khan his palace builded fair,
Where loneliest the shrilling cricket calls.
...
From out the mosques the pious wend their way;
Muezzin voices tremble through the night;
Within the sky the pallid King of Light
Wraps silvered ermine round him while he may,
...
