Another Pushkin setting. This poem is about a prisoner in a dungeon, and a captive eagle he can see in the yard through the bars of his cell. To start with, the music is slow and lugubrious. As he imagines the eagle talking to him, encouraging him to fly away, the music becomes more animated and more positive. But the final chord, where all the dissonances and all the tensions of the song ought to be resolved, is just a bare tritone, leading nowhere, and suggesting that neither the man nor the eagle will ever be free again.

This version of the song uses my English translation of the poem. For a setting of the original Russian words, go to http://www.scoreexchange.com/scores/137530.html