On September 25, we stopped at near Kaniv and visited the burial site of Taras Shevchenko, a rebel-rousing poet and artist who wrote in Ukrainian after the Soviet Union banned the language. In defying the ban, he probably saved the language. In addition, he prodded the Ukrainians to long for independence, which he did not live to see. Ukraine has no one like George Washington, and Shevchenko is the nearest to a national hero of Ukraine, and is known throughout the world (though not previously by me). There are monuments to him throughout the world, even in Washington, D.C.
The bottom photo shows us walking up the stairs from the ship to the top of the hill where the great man is buried. Next photo up shows Wilf, Meka, and Kim overlooking the river and our ship. There is a giant statue of Shevchenko but the light was not right and I could not get any detail of his countenance. The top photo is of a barge moving by.
He died at age 47, having spent most of his life in various prisons, and is buried on a beautiful hillside overlooking the great river because of something he wrote.
Here it is in English.
The Testament
Dig my grave and raise my barrow
By the Dnieper-side
In Ukraina, my own land,
A fair land and wide.
I will lie and watch the cornfields,
Listen through the years
To the river voices roaring,
Roaring in my ears.
When I hear the call
Of the racing flood,
Loud with hated blood,
I will leave them all,
Fields and hills; and force my way
Right up to the Throne
Where God sits alone;
Clasp His feet and pray...
But till that day
What is God to me?
Bury me, be done with me,
Rise and break your chain,
Water your new liberty
With blood for rain.
Then, in the mighty family
Of all men that are free,
May be sometimes, very softly
You will speak of me?
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