Maximilian Voloshin's poem “Our Lady of Vladimir”, 1929

Not on a throne, but on Her arm,
His left little hand embracing Her neck,
Gaze to gaze, cheek pressed to cheek,
He makes his insistent demand… I am struck dumb,
No strength, no words on my tongue…
Gathered in a beast's tension,
The Lion-cub Sphinx has grown fast to her shoulder,
Clung to Her and frozen without motion,
All of him impulse and will, and question.
And She, in anxiety and in sorrow,
Looks across the swell of the future
Into the glowing distances of the world,
Where the throne is wreathed in conflagrations.
And such a mournful agitation
Is in the pure girlish features that the Face,
In the flame of prayer, at every moment
Changes its expression as if alive.
Who opened the lakes of these eyes?
Not Saint Luke the icon-painter,
As the ancient chronicler told,
Not the dark icon-dauber of the Caves:
In the white-hot furnaces of Byzantium,
In the evil days of the persecution of icons,
Her Face out of the fiery element
Was embodied in earthly colours.

Literal translation

Our Lady of Vladimir. Maximilian Voloshin, 1929