At a wild mountain pass where rocks with the winds never do interfere,
Where slopes are too steep and for humans impossible to scan,
Resided an echo, so merry and always so happy to cheer you,
It always responded to a shout, any shout of a man.

When loneliness throttles your breath like a murderous noose,
When a shout, half-choked, falls down a gorge - a desperate shout -
The echo would catch it and smooth it, and would reproduce it,
And carefully, clearly and loudly to friends holler out.

Who was it? Dread dragons, of mandrake, or man-made drugs, drunken,
To make tramps and snores heard by no one of us,
That came to destroy the natural wonder that lived there, to murder
The echo? Securely they bound it, severely they gagged its mouth.

Non-stopped, through the night the deed lasted, bloody and violent.
They tortured the echo, to make sure that its soul they broke...
At last, they shot it down, now helplessly silent,
And tears - broken stones - splattered off the injured rocks.