Lines on Poland

And have I lived to see thee sword in handUprise again immortal Polish Land!—Whose flag brings more than chivalry to mind,And leaves the tri-color in shade behind;—A theme for uninspirèd lips too strong;That swells my heart beyond the power of song:—Majestic men, whose deeds have dazzled faith,Ah! yet your fate’s suspense arrests my breath;Whilst, envying bosoms bared to shot and steel,I feel the more that fruitlessly I feel.Poles! with what indignation I endureTh’ half-pitying servile mouths that call you poor;Poor! is it England mocks you with her grief,That hates, but dares not chide, th’ Imperial Thief?France with her soul beneath a Bourbon’s thrall,And Germany that has no soul at all,—States quailing at the giant overgrown,Whom dauntless Poland grapples with alone?No, ye are rich in fame e’en whilst ye bleed:We cannot aid you—we are poor indeed!

In Fate’s defiance—in the world’s great eye,Poland has won her Immortality!The Butcher, should he reach her bosom now,Could tear not Glory’s garland from her brow;Wreathed, filleted, the victim falls renowned,And all her ashes would be holy ground!

But turn, my soul, from presages so dark:Great Poland’s spirit is a deathless sparkThat’s fanned by Heaven to mock the Tyrant’s rage:She, like the eagle, will renew her age,And fresh historic plumes of Fame put on,—Another Athens after Marathon,—Where eloquence shall fulmine, arts refine,Bright as her arms that now in battle shine.Come—should the heavenly shock my life destroyAnd shut its flood-gates with excess of joy;Come but the day when Poland’s fight is won—And on my grave-stone shine the morrow’s sun—The day that sees Warsaw’s cathedral glowWith endless ensigns ravished from the foe,—Her women lifting their fair hands with thanks,Her pious warriors kneeling in their ranks,The scutcheoned walls of high heraldic boast,The odorous altar’s elevated host,The organ sounding through the aisle’s long glooms,The mighty dead seen sculptured o’er their tombs;(John, Europe’s saviour—Poniatowski’s fairResemblance—Kosciusko’s shall be there;)The tapered pomp—the halleluiah’s swell,Shall o’er the soul’s devotion cast a spell,Till visions cross the rapt enthusiast’s glance,And all the scene becomes a waking trance.Should Fate put far—far off that glorious scene,And gulfs of havoc interpose between,Imagine not, ye men of every clime,Who act, or by your sufferance share the crime—Your brother Abel’s blood shall vainly pleadAgainst the “deep damnation” of the deed.Germans ye view its horror and disgraceWith cold phosphoric eyes and phlegm of face.Is Allemagne profound in science, lore,And minstrel art?—her shame is but the moreTo doze and dream by governments oppressed,The spirit of a book-worm in each breast.Well can ye mouth fair Freedom’s classic line,And talk of Constitutions o’er your wine:But all your vows to break the tyrant’s yokeExpire in Bacchanalian song and smoke:Heavens! can no ray of foresight pierce the leadsAnd mystic metaphysics of your heads,To show the self-same grave, Oppression delvesFor Poland’s rights, is yawning for yourselves!

See, whilst the Pole, the vanguard aid of France,Has vaulted on his barb and couched the lance,France turns from her abandoned friends afresh,And soothes the Bear that prowls for patriot flesh,Buys, ignominious purchase! short repose,With dying curses and the groans of thoseThat served, and loved, and put in her their trust.Frenchmen! the dead accuse you from the dust—Brows laurelled—bosoms marked with many a scarFor France—that wore her Legion’s noblest star,Cast dumb reproaches from the field of DeathOn Gallic honour; and this broken faithHas robbed you more of Fame—the life of life,—Than twenty battles lost in glorious strife!

And what of England—Is she steeped so lowIn poverty, crest-fallen, and palsied so,That we must sit much wroth, but timorous more,With murder knocking at our neighbour’s door!—Not murder masked and cloaked with hidden knife,Whose owner owes the gallows life for life;But Public Murder!—that with pomp and gaud,And royal scorn of Justice walks abroadTo wring more tears and blood than e’er were wrungBy all the culprits Justice ever hung!We read the diademed Assassin’s vaunt,And wince, and wish we had not hearts to pantWith useless indignation—sigh, and frown,But have not hearts to throw the gauntlet down.

If but a doubt hung o’er the grounds of fray,Or trivial rapine stopped the world’s highway;Were this some common strife of States embroiled;—Britannia on the spoiler and the spoiledMight calmly look, and, asking time to breathe,Still honourably wear her olive wreathBut this is Darkness combating with Light:Earth’s adverse Principles for empire fight:Oppression, that has belted half the globe,Far as his knout could reach or dagger probe,Holds reeking o’er our brother freemen slainThat dagger—shakes it at us in disdain;Talks big to Freedom’s states of Poland’s thrall,And, trampling one, contemns them one and all.

My Country! colours not thy once proud browAt this effront?—Hast thou not fleets enowWith Glory’s streamer, lofty as the lark,Gay fluttering o’er each thunder-bearing bark,To warm th’ Insulter’s seas with barb’rous blood,And interdict his flag from Ocean’s flood?E’en now far off the sea-cliff, where I sing,I see, my Country, and my Patriot King!Your ensign glad the deep. Becalmed and slowA war-ship rides; while Heaven’s prismatic bowUprisen behind her on th’ horizon’s base, }Shines flushing through the tackle, shrouds, and stays, }And wraps her giant form in one majestic blaze. }My soul accepts the omen; Fancy’s eyeHas sometimes a veracious augury:The Rainbow types Heaven’s promise to my sight;The Ship, Britannia’s interposing Might!

But if there should be none to aid you, Poles,Ye’ll but to prouder pitch wind up your souls,Above example, pity, praise or blame,To sow and reap a boundless field of Fame.Ask aid no more from Nations that forgetYour championship—old Europe’s mighty debt.Though Poland (Lazarus-like) has burst the gloom,She rises not a beggar from the tomb:In Fortune’s frown, on Danger’s giddiest brink,Despair and Poland’s name must never link.All ills have bounds—plague, whirlwind, fire, and flood:E’en power can spill but bounded sums of blood.States caring not what freedom’s price may be,May late or soon, but must at last be free;For body-killing tyrants cannot killThe public soul—the hereditary willThat downward as from sire to son it goes,By shifting bosoms more intensely glows:Its heir-loom is the heart, and slaughtered menFight fiercer in their orphans o’er again.Poland recasts—though rich in heroes old,—Her men in more and more heroic mould:Her Eagle-ensign best among mankindBecome, and types her eagle-strength of mind:Her praise upon my faltering lips expires:Resume it, younger bards, and nobler lyres!

The fact ought to be universally known, that France was indebted toPoland for not being invaded by Russia. When the Duke Constantine fledfrom Warsaw, he left papers behind him proving that the Russians, afterthe Parisian events in July, meant to have marched towards Paris, if thePolish insurrection had not prevented them.