Letter to Siberia by Alexander Pushkin

Deep in the dark Siberian mines
Preserve a proud, unyielding patience.
Your grievous toil is not in vain,
Not are your selfless aspirations.

Hope, Misery’s own sister fair,
Down in your dismal catacomb
Shall bring you cheer and banish gloom:
The time shall come you so desire.

Friendship and love shall reach you through
The grim and cruel prison bars,
As into those dank cells of yours
My free voice wings its way to you.

Thoser heavy chains you shall discard,
The prison shall fall and liberty
Shall come to greet you joyfully:
Your peers shall hand you back the sword.

(1827)
Translated by Alex Miller. Soviet Literature Monthly, No 12 (333), 1975.