16.

The core of this poem (verses 3–6 from page 16 of the notebook) is a raw, tormented plea from a heartbroken lover who is consumed by separation, jealousy, and despair. The speaker stands at the window, watching spring pass, while bitterly contrasting the once-happy, dove-like love they shared with the beloved (“Mil’ko” / darling) to its current ruin — the relationship has “scattered like smoke.” The beloved is now far away, flirting and forgetting the speaker, who suspects he is with another woman “at your own window.” This realization brings sleepless anguish (“no peace either by day or by night”) and floods of bitter tears, ending in a desperate, repeated call for the “dove” (a classic endearment) to return and stay faithful.

Main themes:

• Lost / betrayed love and painful separation — the central emotional wound; the love that once felt eternal has vanished.
• Jealousy and suspicion — the speaker’s torment over the beloved enjoying himself “with others” and specifically with “that one” at the window.
• Emotional torment and longing — sleeplessness, heartache, and the inability to find peace, expressed with raw intensity (“bitter tears I cry”).
• Hopeful plea for reconciliation — the tender, repeated appeals (“return, dove,” “my little heart”) show lingering love mixed with a threat of punishment if he remains false.
• Traditional Ukrainian folk-song imagery — black eyebrows and eyes as symbols of beauty, doves representing paired lovers, the window as a place of lonely watching, and spring marking the passage of time — all hallmarks of early 20th-century Ukrainian “pisni” (folk songs) often copied into personal notebooks like this one.