VOL. I, NO. I, MARCH 1906

The Song of the Storm-Finch

By Maxim Gorky

In a poem well-known in Russia, Maxim Gorky made the storm petrel—here translated as “storm-finch”—the symbolic herald of the revolution that was soon to erupt in the land. “The Song of the Storm-Finch” was, fittingly, the lead contribution to the first issue of Mother Earth, immediately following the inaugural editorial by Emma Goldman and Max Baginski. The translator, Alice Stone Blackwell, was the editor of the suffragist Woman’s Journal, founded by her parents, Henry Blackwell and Lucy Stone.

THE STRONG WIND is gathering the storm-clouds together³
Above the gray plain of the ocean so wide.
The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning,
Between clouds and ocean is soaring in pride.

 

Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting
Up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high,
The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly;
The clouds can hear joy in the bird’s fearless cry.

In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest,
And anger’s hot might in its wild notes is heard;
The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph—
All these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird....

 

The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring;
With flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glow
O’er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings,
And quenches them deep in its whirlpool below.

 

Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing,
The lightnings reflected there quiver and shake
As into the blackness they vanish forever.
The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break!

 

The storm-finch soars fearless and proud mid the lightnings,
Above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret;
And what is the prophet of victory saying?
“Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet—fiercer yet!”