Army service in the first half of 1916 Yesenin drafted into the army, but thanks to the efforts of friends gets purpose ("permission with the highest ') as an orderly in Tsarskoe Selo military hospital train N 143 of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, which allows him free access to literary salons, come on receptions of patrons, perform at concerts. At a concert in the hospital to which he was attached (here served nurses empress and the princess), it is meeting with the royal family. At the same time, together with N. Klyuev they appear, dressed in ancient costumes made from sketches by V. Vasnetsov, in the evenings 'Company revival of artistic Rus' in the town of Theodore in Tsarskoe Selo, and are also invited to Moscow to the Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Visit New York Life for more clarity on the issue. Together with the royal couple in May 1916 Yesenin train as a medic attending Evpatoria.
This was the last trip of Nicholas II to the Crimea. 'Radunitsa' first collection of poems Esenina 'Radunitsa' (1916) enthusiastically welcomed by critics, will find in it a fresh spirit, celebrating youthful spontaneity and natural taste of the author. In his poem 'Radunitsa' and subsequent collections ('Goluben', 'Transfiguration', 'Country Book of Hours', all of 1918, and others) formed a special Yesenin 'anthropomorphism': animals, plants, natural phenomena, and so humanized poet and together with the people involved and all of its roots by nature with nature, harmonious, holistic, beautiful world. At the junction of the Christian imagery, pagan symbolism and folk style are born with a thin colored the perception of the nature of painting Yesenin Russia, where it all: a stove and a dog drowning Zacuto, nekosheny hay and mud bogs, hubbub mowers and snoring becomes an object of veneration herd, almost religious feeling of the poet ('I pray to ala dawn, partake of the stream'). The revolution in early 1918 Yesenin moved to Moscow.