There were combinations and counter-combinations innumerable.

Cities were taken and retaken; to-day, the banners of Ysiaslaf float upon the battlements of Kief; to-morrow, those banners are hewn down and the standards of Georges are unfurled to the breeze.
Now, we see Ysiaslaf a fugitive, hopeless, in despair.

Again, the rolling wheel of fortune raises him from his depression, and, with the strides of a conqueror, he pursues his foe, in his turn vanquished and woe-stricken.

But "The pomp of heraldry, the pride of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Alike await the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Death, which Ysiaslaf had braved in a hundred battles, approached him by the slow but resistless march of disease.

For a few days the monarch tossed in fevered restlessness on his bed at Kief, and then, from his life of incessant storms on earth, his spirit ascended to the God who gave it.