1. Kurobatkin's day is not like yesterday
So weep for your defeats, I sympathize

2. We both suffer, an enemy tormenting you
And tormenting me is my own soul

3. You have failed with arrow and shield
As I failed with pen and paper

4. I did not fall short in manners and knowledge
Nor did you fall short in resolve and valor

5. And Caesar the Oppressor shook you until
You seemed to stand against him at a wedding

6. You rushed his good fortune and passed around a cup
As if the stars, did you but know, were inauspicious

7. You went about hugging swords pretentiously
And found familiarity in blades – what familiarity!

8. To seize the diadem of the Son of the Sun by force
And present his crown to the lowliest head

9. For a palace in the land of China without equal
The Russians beseeched you or to build barracks

10. That ice made no fire with anger
From one remote, slow to forgive, unbending

11. O Caesar, your people did not hesitate
Nor were they without conquest and bites

12. But you drove them to war against their will
And they did not trust you in drought and imprisonment

13. And fighting without hope does not avail
For troops resigned to humiliation and chains

14. Can any edifice withstand the storms of time
If you want with it to reach the sky without a foundation?

15. So taste the fruits of your rule over subjects
In whom you planted the worst crops

16. You distracted them from it with this war
Seeking to remedy an intractable problem with five

17. For the tyranny of Caesar over his people
Who lost a lifetime of luxury to sadness

18. This is the greatest lesson for the arrogant giants
Of the yellow race, the shortest of men

19. Where are the horsemen of the Cossacks who
The horsemen hold in awe, whether Tartar or Persian

20. And where is your supremacy that you claimed
And your power over the lowliest neighbor

21. Will Caesar the despoiler ever return one day
To say: "War is filth - what filth!"

22. Leave a land that leads you astray
And whose fertility brings you ruin and perdition

23. For the brigades do not know where they walk
Nor do the ships know where they will dock

24. You refused to share with the truthful their right
Yet you returned without preserving a sixth