" They
lead that nation which, far from thrusting men
down to the pit, is to uplift them as she mounts
ever higher.
lead that nation which, far from thrusting men
down to the pit, is to uplift them as she mounts
ever higher.
Poland - 1915 - Poland, a Study in National Idealism - Monica Gardner
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 157
From the eternal gates Thy sparks
O'er time's waves until time flameth!
Now, again, Thy dawn is dawning
Which Thou in Thy love dost grant us.
In the graves the bones shall tremble
Sighing in a hymn to Thee.
"For our souls' and bodies' sufferings,
For our hundred years of torment,
We do give Thee thanks, oh, Lord.
We are poor and weak and feeble,
But, from this martyrdom of ours,
Has begun Thy reign on earth. "
And the poet ends his poem in a paean of
ecstasy and joy, which is doubtlessly inspired not
only by a national hope, but by the deliverance
of his own soul from the shadow of death in which
he had dwelt. The might of Satan's rule is no
more. The weak are oppressed no longer. Earth
is one song of harmony and rejoicing. The dark
days behind us were only a dreadful dream.
"Long the power of that dream.
We believed it. We believed
In eternal pain and toil.
They were but the sanctuary's entrance;
But one step upon the stairway.
They were but the night of merit.
"Human heart, where now thy shame?
Look into thyself, oh, gaze!
Where of old was rage and weeping,
Groans and cries and lamentation,
Lo, to-day of heaven's high mercy
Is the second house of God. "
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? 158 POLAND
Forbidden by the censor, this poem yet found
its way into Poland, and was watered with the
tears of those who read. *
In Dawn Krasinski had found his standpoint
and never modified it. His subsequent teaching
was rather in the nature of crystallizing his warn-
ings to his people in special moments of national
necessity; of reducing his general principles to
practice. He had in his epilogue to Dawn said he
would sing no more, for the only prayer worthy
of the Creator knows no division between thought
and deed. "Never, never again will I string my
harp. Other are the roads that lie open before us.
Perish, my songs! Arise, my deeds! " But in
KrasinsH's relations with his nation his poetry
was his deed. He wrote not so much from a poet's
inspiration as from a patriot's. He had no vision
of literary fame. When the voice of Poland called,
he wrote for her sake. At other times he remained
silent.
The Psalms of the Future, which followed Dawn,
are# therefore, in a manner episodical. But Kras-
inski is never merely topical or individual. He
spoke seventy years ago. While these words are
being written during the most terrible convulsion
of modern times, the language and the tenets of
the Polish poet rise instinctively to the mind, as
almost strangely apposite to the needs and events
of the hour.
* S. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 159
The first in order of date in the cycle of the
Psalms is the Psalm of Love. The Psalm of Faith
and the Psalm of Hope were written shortly after-
wards as a sort of introduction to the third Psalm.
We will therefore take them first. The occasion. of
all three Psalms, and most especially of the Psalm
of Love, was Krasinski's foreboding of the danger
that threatened his country from the democratic
propaganda that was then proceeding.
As the title implies, the Psalm of Faith (1845)
is Krasinski's confession of personal and national
faith, and of his belief in the relations of God
with the future of humanity.
The soul casts off the body and mind, worn out
by a thousand trials. Men call that moment
death; but it is her second birth. She does not
die. Taking to herself new and " unwearied wings,"
she soars into a higher region, leaving behind her
the waning tracts of the past, with before her the
endlessly stretching fields of measureless space,
till she reaches " Him Who is all and enfoldeth all,
the beginning and the end of Heaven and of
earth. "
"To Him I travel without pause. Thither
must I first go through the pains of hell, through
the toils of Purgatory, till I begin to put me on
body and soul more radiant, and ascend to the
other world. There, is eternal life and life un-
ceasing. " Hymning Paradise, as the desire of God,
"love without bounds, that is life without end,"
he turns to the contemplation of Him Who is
"Being, Thought, and Life, the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. And we in His image must live im-
mortally, must live together with Him, born of
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? 160 POLAND
His bosom to live in His eternity. " As He created
us, we must create and draw from ourselves thai
which He has given to us to create. " Inasmuch
as we can, poor, in angelic lowliness, that which
Thou gavest us of Thy mercy, we must give back
to Thee, oh, God, and thus live eternally in Thee
by eternal love. "
This, then, leads up to Krasinski's national and
political mysticism. "The history of humanity
is the school of the soul. " Christ will. judge the
nations on the day of resurrection; for to each
of these nations has been given some deep thought
from the heart of the Creator, as their special
predestined work for the human race. " And some
are chosen before all others to combat for Thy
beauty on the earth; to carry the cross in a
bloodstained track; to give out the more love
and greater brotherhood in exchange against the
murderer's knife. "
"Such a one, oh, God, is Thy Polish nation.
Tho' the world gives her such pain that she could
even doubt of hope, may she hold out in this -
unheard of suffering. For she is surely anointed in
Thy spirit, for she is surely Thy high priest on
this earth, if she will understand that Thou lovest
without bounds those sons whom Thou dost
crown with thorns; for the thorn, steeped in
blood, is the everlasting'flower, and with it Thou
shalt renew the youth of all humanity. "
He concludes with a mystical analogy between
the history and the calling of the human race, and
the Divine pattern of Him Who came to save it.
[ " Christ ever dwelleth in thee, oh, humanity.
His blood is thine. His body is thy body. With
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 161
reats thee shall be what did befall to Him. He bore all
5 tiu thy vicissitudes within His flesh. To thee He
imnc manifested all thy hopes. Whence art thou born?
ffiid From a pure virgin womb, because from God's
: bad own thought in godly likeness. Whither dost thou
Ik go? To thy Father's city. By what road must
thou pass? Through pain and labour. And when
lane Christ on the summit of Mount Thabor was
mitv wrapped around with the eternal dawn, seest
: tie thou not what that sign to thee foretelleth?
each Thou, too, oh, human race, shalt be transfigured,
wit' Thou shalt leave at the foot of the dark moun-
>cial tains all that deceives, and all that is of sorrow;
,ne and thou shalt take spiritual knowledge with thee,
flir ^ and the eternal, unending love of hearts. And, in
, j the strength of these two holy powers, as Christ
ore - shalt thou ascend to globes of light. All sin shall
tie' be erased from thy forehead. Light as feathers'
shall thy wings be. Thy hands shalt thou stretch
j. . forth on the white air, and in it shalt thou poise--
as air thyself. "
? ' Having enunciated his dogma of faith, Krasinski
j proceeded to its natural sequence--the Psalm of
u - Hope. Here, for once, there is scarcely a trace of
jt the sadness, which overshadows the work of the
. t poet whose heart was broken with sorrow for his
t - nation.
"Long enough," thus opens the Psalm of Hope,
m "has the grief of the poets sounded the strings.
Now is it time to strike on a second string, on the
steel of deeds. "
The poem is instinct with life, freshness and
joy. The Revealer, the promised Paraclete, is nigh.
With Hjm will begin the third and spiritualized
M
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? POLAND
epoch. It is not the thrones or crowns who
will be the first to perceive the advent of the
Consoler, but she who, guiltless, is martyred.
Then neither the merchant's cupidity, nor the
executioner's hand, can prevail against Him Who
is to' change the universe.
"Oh, come more quickly, spring of the world!
Oh, come more quickly, God the Spirit! Fare-
well, oh, earth, with thy pain and with thy
mourning. The new Jerusalem is shining on the
vale of this old earth. The road was long, and the
toil heavy. A sea of tears and blood has flowed.
But the angelic time draws near. Poland! thy
grave was only as the cradle of the dawn.
"Tear aside the cloud of ages. Let us praise
the Lord Who comes. Strew ye palms and strew
ye psalms, flowers below and songs on high. Oh,
cast songs and cast ye flowers! Lo, He comes, the
Lord is coming. Now no more the Man of sorrows,
choosing thorns and nails and wounds "; but
"transfigured, from beyond the starred walls of
the universe, as the blue all-horizon," He comes.
"Oh, drink ye with your souls that heavenly
blue. Though you are tortured, you are tempted,
oh, believe ye in my hope. "
But neither here nor elsewhere in Krasinski's
teaching will he allow that hope to be anything
but conditional. It is to be proved in the fires of
action. It is to be secured only at the price of
individual and national self-discipline. "From
your faith shall your will be, from your will shall
your deed be. " And on his trumpet note, " It is
time to strike on the steel of deeds," the Psalm
of Hop concludes,
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 163
We know how the Polish Rising, projected in
the forties of the nineteenth century on democratic
lines, was pushed by Austrian machinations into a
different movement, and ended in the Galician'
massacres. Krasinski's piercingly clear political
acumen was never obscured by the mystic tend-
ency of his mind. He saw whither a class agitation
would be likely to lead a nation groaning as
was Poland under abnormal and intolerable con-
ditions. Before the disaster befell, trembling for
the moral danger that threatened his country,
Krasinski sent forth a passionate cry to those of
his fellow Poles, who were working a national'
rising as a social revolution, to stay before it was
too late. That warning is his Psalm oflLove. The
Psalm of Love is a plea to the human race, no less .
than to one people, to shun the works of bloodshed
and violence: the poet's attestation that one
only element can save a nation, namely, love.
"Carry your arms against hell. Slay the black
brood of demons. The guillotine and pillage are
the weapons of the human race in its infancy; rage,
the liberty, not of man, but of the beast. Now is
the time to take to oneself the toil of angels, the
time to cast off every stain, and by that very act
to conquer slavery. Destruction is not action.
There is but one truth, divine, fruitful in deed;
transfiguration through love. "
With his soul's whole strength, he pleads that the
Poland he loved to call holy, who he believed was
to prove to mankind that virtue and love are
stronger than brute force, must never, by stooping
to unworthiness and violence, lose her destined
vocation. .
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? 164
POLAND
"Who changeth sorrow into crime, who forgeth
fetters into knives, not into swords, cursed be he. "
"When geniuses have descended to this world,
they have led their cause by a different road. No
one of them was a dictator of the ages through
murder and the torture chamber. Rather, they
live in peril, in the end they die, but their victory
lasts for ever. Only the weak soul chooses butchery.
His name is Marius, his name is Robespierre. "
Then he bids such of his countrymen who
would sweep away the ancient nobility of Poland
to look upon what the latter have done for their
country. They have died for Poland in battle. They
have perished for her in Siberia. And who, asks
the poet, could we find who are faultless ? " Only
one, He only Who was man and God; and from
the sinner another man soars upward through
suffering, changed as the phoenix, and immortal. "
Search the world; the Alps, the waters of the
Mediterranean, the Spanish sierras, the snows of
Russia, the battlefields of France, where the
Polish nobles have sown "the seed of future
Poland, the god-like grain, their own blood;
and you are the children of that pain.
" They
lead that nation which, far from thrusting men
down to the pit, is to uplift them as she mounts
ever higher. But near her stands the tempter.
Evil thoughts "grow where there are chains. "
Siberia and the knout are nothing to the poison
sown by slavery. "But the corrupted spirit of a
nation, that only is the pain of pains " ; conscience
warped by a mass of suffering, reason confused by
the' wandering of perverted pride, crime repre-
levied as virtue, children taught to look on murder
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 165
as a glorious deed, the sister bidding the brother
take up the assassin's dagger, the native country
turned into a hell.
"Oh, my holy one, abjure these delusions, the
phantoms of an evil moment. Thou wilt not rid
thee of thy ancient faith, that he only can cut
through his chains who is anointed with the sign
of virtue, that to be a Pole upon this earth is to
live nobly and to God. "
The Anonymous Poet reads hope from the
very afflictions that thronged around his nation
on every side.
"My Poland! Holy Poland! Thou standest
on the threshold of thy victory. This is the last
term of thy sorrows. Let it be only seen that thou
art the eternal foe of evil. Then shall the chains of
death be shattered, and thou wilt be assumed to
heaven, because even in death thou wast with
God. "
In the final moment when death struggles with
life, when dying lips sob out the last accents of
doubt and lamentation:
"In the strength of thy martyrdom overcome
that moment, conquer that pain; and thou shalt
rise again, thou shalt rise as the queen of the
Slavonian fields. "
Then the poet turns to the ideal of Messianistic
longings; the celestial vision of a spiritualized
country.
"Let them who love thee gaze on thy face as
on the spring. Be the mistress who straightens
the crooked things of the world, the leader of
universal love. Blot out all sin, dry all tears, rule
over the world of souls, spurn the government
>
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? i66
POLAND
of flesh. Unpolluted, carry the breath of the
Lord. "
But that spiritual conquest is not reached yet.
The powers of darkness are still close at hand.
"Fling away your murderous weapons," is the
reiteration that tolls all through the concluding
verses of the psalm. "Against hell carry your
arms. / Slay the black brood of demons. " And, when
the word of the Lord shall thunder forth, " then
forward in the name of God" to the holy rising,
from which " God will not turn away His face. "
So ends the poem which Count Tarnowski
places among the world's splendid failures of
patriotic pleading,* written to save a nation, and
written in vain.
The catastrophe, greater even than what Kras-
inski had foretold, came to pass in 1846. Krasinski
( beheld the country, whose purity and suffering
. he had promised would confer upon her the
heralding of a new spiritual epoch, dragged down
to shame. His anguish brought him to the jjoint
of death. From that time he was prematurely
aged. Rent by the distress of his soul under which
his bodily frame came near to sinking, in the
agony of those days when Galicia was soaked in
blood spilt by her own children, he could still,
he did still, cling to the conviction of his heart.
He could still tell the beloved friend to whom he
poured out his thoughts that the idea would
conquer. f He could still, apparently a dying man,
tear from his pain words of consolation for his
* S. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
t Letters of Zygmunt Krmsinski. W >>\. I. To Constantine Gaszynski,
March 1st, 1846.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 167 /
people. And so he gave his nation her Psalmfof"
Grief. f
Slowacki, formerly Krasinski's friend, had, in a
poem of extraordinary artistic beauty, made~
mockery, not untouched by a personal gibe *at
the Anonymous Poet's private tragedy, of the
anti-revolutionary tendency of the Psalm of Love.
The Psalm of Grief is Krasinski's justification
against his brother-poet's attack. In grave and
dignified accents, with the generosity of one who(
Sassed over the bitterness of an individual wound,
Irasinski answers the poem that he himself
praised as an ornament to the Polish language.
Would, says he, that he had been the false prophet,
and that his challenger had been the true one\T
On the lines of the Psalm of Love, he refutes the
revolutionary tenets that he believed could only"
bring a nation to ruin. The spirit and the flesh
ever war, the idea against the brute beast, the
angel against the tiger. In the combat and con-
vulsion of the world, who shall redeem us? Who
shall bring harmony into a disordered chaos?
He Who knows neither the burden of the' body
nor the sickness of the soul: the Holy Ghost.
Beneath His rule blood will be shed no more. "In
the morning He waketh to hope the people
who slumber. " He shall make the very shadows
"as silver, till dawn becomes midday. "
Brotherly love will save those who are trembling
on the very brink of the abyss. Parted from each
other, they are damned. United, they are redeemed.
The radiance of the Holy Ghost conquers the
curse of centuries. The soul,ruled by Him, "shall
feel the love of toil and the courage of suffering. "
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? 168' / POLAND
She shall " lift men from the mire and hide their
shame. Unabased in the midst of vileness, loving
evef' in the midst of trials, her heart will become
as steel, and her eyes shall weep for every human
grief. " /Rhus through love and pain shall the soul
vwork her way to God. Even with the horror of
r what had recently befallen fresh upon him; when
v to keep hope alive, where every exterior event
incited to despair, meant a life and death struggle,
the^Anonymous Poet spoke a message of virility
i and life. He bade his people be the nation to rise
'-5* above moral stain, whose weapon shall not be the
i -' assassin's but Christ's, and who will' therefore
conquer in the power of Christ; whose triumph
'shall be commensurate with her anguish and' her
'. love. "Thus she riseth from the dead": are the
^ . last words of the Psalm of Grief. 'Ti '. ^
With the Psalm of Good WilU-tS^r-tr^-
- j ^ inski's Psalms of the Future close. I^hisj'^he noblest
^~ of Krasinski's poems, is-^e seal^f his life's ? work,
'the culmination of tfc^great prophetical poetry
"^of Poland. His own pain had taught Krasinski -his.
message to his nation. The Psalm of Good Will
breathes the sadness and majesty of a farewell to
his people, from one who had won to his haven
after suffering and struggle. In its long, sweeping
cadences the hymn reveals that the poet had
looked into the mysteries of grief only to rise
'victorious above them; that he had found in
-,Jcreath no^tirig^but resurrection^ His prayer is not
''~~for his fiaiion's glory, not for her material triumph,
but for thatiwhich will bring her both: for good
will. . 1
Now that Thy judgment has thundered in
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 169
heaven on the two thousand years that have past,
amidst that judgment, grant us, oh, Lord, that
by our holy deeds we may rise from death. " ,
This is the petition of which the poet cannot
weary, to which the stanzas of the Psalm modu-
late as into some grand closing chord.
"Thou hast given us all that Thou couldst'
give, oh, Lord," sings the son of the unhappiest
of nations. With the eyes of mystical devotion,
he reads in her past a history of love. " Thou hast
given us all that Thou couldst give, oh, Lord". ;
for, when thrust down from the land of the living
by dismen\berment, "Thou didst keep us who
were dead living in the field of war. We were not,
and we '*vere. . . . Thou hast given us all that
Thou oqulast give, oh, Lord; a pure life, there-
fore worthy of the cross, and the cross that brings
us to Thy stars; Earth Thou didst take from us>,
and send down heaven, and Thy heart shelters
us on every side. But our free will Thou hadst to
leave to us. Without ourselves, even Thou canst
not save us; for so hast Thou ennobled man and
every nation that Thy thought, suspended in
heaven, awaits the choice of man or nation for
their several roads. " " Thou hast*¥ us all that
Thou courdst give, oh, Lord "; tne example of
Jerusalem, " in whom Thy love for so long dwelt,"
and who is throneless and widowed -because she
desired revenge, and does not understand the
might of Christ's cross. "Thou hast given us all
that Thou couldst give, oh, Lord"; foj we have
seen how the works of death bring destruction,
not on those against whom they are directed,- but
on those who handle them. v
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? 170 POLAND
Here ends the tranquil and devout hymn of
praise. Behind Krasinski's promises, there is always
the reality of an exacting warfare. If Poland is to
be a. chosen nation, the harder must be her struggle
to justify her calling. The Psalm becomes a sup-
plication for victory in the battle.
"W. e are above the abyss, on the narrow
straits. Our wings are sprouting to the resurrec-
'don, our lips are parted for the cry of joy. From
the blue skies, as though from Thy bosom, golden
shafts of dawn, as though Thy sheltering arms, are
spreading from the heavens to us on earth below,
to take from our foreheads the load of agelong
sorrow. All is ready, and the east is all aflame, and
angels watching. "
But from the other side, heaving to our feet,
rises the darkness: "the pit, eternal death, where
Thou art not," where are all things evil. If we
turn^one backward glance towards it, one step to
meet it, then "the light of dawn will pale upon
our brows, Thy Son shall shed no tear for us, and
the Holy Spirit shall not console us. "
"Have mercy, Lord, defend us, be with us! "
We stand alone to face the final moment. None
may help us. Our destiny is in our own hands.
Then the name, with which "upon their lips
millions of Polish souls have gone to death," rises
in the poet's heart: the name of Mary. He sees
her, not with the rapture of his earlier vision in
Dawn, leading in triumph a host of warriors, but
as a suppliant, kneeling at the throne of her Son,
pleading for a suffering nation. He sees her above
the stars that turn to her in prayer, above suns
and the Milky Way, and behind her, weeping, are
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 'rj\
the souls of the Polish dead. Below is the pit,
echoing with the mocking laughter of hell. Its
winds roar in our ears, the foam of its waves
blinds our eyes by which it would drag us down to s,
death. "Oh, vain one, it seeth not what /is being
wrought on high. Oh, vain one, it seeth not that
its rage is nought when such a heart for us is
wrung. " And the poet then pours out his last
prayer for his people:
"Oh, Lord, Lord, then not for hope--as a
flower is it strewn : then not for the destruction of
our foes--their destruction dawns on to-morrow's
clouds: not for the weapons of rule--from the
tempests they will fall to us: not for any help--
Thou hast opened already the field of events
before us: but amidst the terrible convulsion of
these events, we beseech Thee only for a pure will
within ourselves, oh, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
"Oh, Thou most dear, hidden but visible
beyond the veils of the transparent worlds, Thou
present everywhere, immortal, holy! Thou Who
commandedst the being of man that, poor in
strength, and little in his birth, he should to an
angel grow by might of sacrifice; and to our
Polish nation didst ordain that she should lead
the nations into love and peace ! We beseech Thee,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we, suspended
between Thy kingdom and the pit, we beseech
Thee with our foreheads sunk to earth, our temples
bathed in the breathing of Thy spring, surrounded
with the wheels of shattered times and perishing
governments, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! we
beseech Thee create in us a pure heart, make
new our thoughts within us, root out from our
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? 172
POLAND
souls tie tares of sacrilegious falsehood, and give
us the gift, ^eternal among Thy gifts--give us
good will! " v
One . only word more remained to Krasinski to
speak to his people, and then his work was done.
In the thick of the terrible events of 1846, when,
weighed down by physical weakness and mental
agony, he could scarcely set pen to paper, he had
struggled fcV&end his nation the message she
needed. '
'. ' ? )h, pray for me to God," he wrote to Delfina
Potocka, as his spirit wrestled against a mind and
body too wearied to obey its bidding. "I feel
nothing egotistic in that desire. For Poland"--
whom even in a private letter he, calls by a feigned
name--" is/ bent beneath all the winds. She
implores, she implores for counsel. "* Dis'satisfiedr*'
with what he wrote; JCrasifiski did- taot publish
the poem in question till 1851, when it came out
und,er the. title ^Resurx^ctup^l It stands forth as his'
supreme ^ctory ov. er^' pessimism <<id d<<apair.
WhaxA he. asks; is this world but"a "cemetery of
ft^s, of blood and mire? This world is eternal
Golgotha to each. The spirit writhes in vain
against its pain. There is no halting place in the--
tempest of this life. Fate mocks us every moment.
Death is close ; and only far away, somewhere on 1
a later wave of ages, resurrection.
? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 157
From the eternal gates Thy sparks
O'er time's waves until time flameth!
Now, again, Thy dawn is dawning
Which Thou in Thy love dost grant us.
In the graves the bones shall tremble
Sighing in a hymn to Thee.
"For our souls' and bodies' sufferings,
For our hundred years of torment,
We do give Thee thanks, oh, Lord.
We are poor and weak and feeble,
But, from this martyrdom of ours,
Has begun Thy reign on earth. "
And the poet ends his poem in a paean of
ecstasy and joy, which is doubtlessly inspired not
only by a national hope, but by the deliverance
of his own soul from the shadow of death in which
he had dwelt. The might of Satan's rule is no
more. The weak are oppressed no longer. Earth
is one song of harmony and rejoicing. The dark
days behind us were only a dreadful dream.
"Long the power of that dream.
We believed it. We believed
In eternal pain and toil.
They were but the sanctuary's entrance;
But one step upon the stairway.
They were but the night of merit.
"Human heart, where now thy shame?
Look into thyself, oh, gaze!
Where of old was rage and weeping,
Groans and cries and lamentation,
Lo, to-day of heaven's high mercy
Is the second house of God. "
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? 158 POLAND
Forbidden by the censor, this poem yet found
its way into Poland, and was watered with the
tears of those who read. *
In Dawn Krasinski had found his standpoint
and never modified it. His subsequent teaching
was rather in the nature of crystallizing his warn-
ings to his people in special moments of national
necessity; of reducing his general principles to
practice. He had in his epilogue to Dawn said he
would sing no more, for the only prayer worthy
of the Creator knows no division between thought
and deed. "Never, never again will I string my
harp. Other are the roads that lie open before us.
Perish, my songs! Arise, my deeds! " But in
KrasinsH's relations with his nation his poetry
was his deed. He wrote not so much from a poet's
inspiration as from a patriot's. He had no vision
of literary fame. When the voice of Poland called,
he wrote for her sake. At other times he remained
silent.
The Psalms of the Future, which followed Dawn,
are# therefore, in a manner episodical. But Kras-
inski is never merely topical or individual. He
spoke seventy years ago. While these words are
being written during the most terrible convulsion
of modern times, the language and the tenets of
the Polish poet rise instinctively to the mind, as
almost strangely apposite to the needs and events
of the hour.
* S. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 159
The first in order of date in the cycle of the
Psalms is the Psalm of Love. The Psalm of Faith
and the Psalm of Hope were written shortly after-
wards as a sort of introduction to the third Psalm.
We will therefore take them first. The occasion. of
all three Psalms, and most especially of the Psalm
of Love, was Krasinski's foreboding of the danger
that threatened his country from the democratic
propaganda that was then proceeding.
As the title implies, the Psalm of Faith (1845)
is Krasinski's confession of personal and national
faith, and of his belief in the relations of God
with the future of humanity.
The soul casts off the body and mind, worn out
by a thousand trials. Men call that moment
death; but it is her second birth. She does not
die. Taking to herself new and " unwearied wings,"
she soars into a higher region, leaving behind her
the waning tracts of the past, with before her the
endlessly stretching fields of measureless space,
till she reaches " Him Who is all and enfoldeth all,
the beginning and the end of Heaven and of
earth. "
"To Him I travel without pause. Thither
must I first go through the pains of hell, through
the toils of Purgatory, till I begin to put me on
body and soul more radiant, and ascend to the
other world. There, is eternal life and life un-
ceasing. " Hymning Paradise, as the desire of God,
"love without bounds, that is life without end,"
he turns to the contemplation of Him Who is
"Being, Thought, and Life, the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. And we in His image must live im-
mortally, must live together with Him, born of
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? 160 POLAND
His bosom to live in His eternity. " As He created
us, we must create and draw from ourselves thai
which He has given to us to create. " Inasmuch
as we can, poor, in angelic lowliness, that which
Thou gavest us of Thy mercy, we must give back
to Thee, oh, God, and thus live eternally in Thee
by eternal love. "
This, then, leads up to Krasinski's national and
political mysticism. "The history of humanity
is the school of the soul. " Christ will. judge the
nations on the day of resurrection; for to each
of these nations has been given some deep thought
from the heart of the Creator, as their special
predestined work for the human race. " And some
are chosen before all others to combat for Thy
beauty on the earth; to carry the cross in a
bloodstained track; to give out the more love
and greater brotherhood in exchange against the
murderer's knife. "
"Such a one, oh, God, is Thy Polish nation.
Tho' the world gives her such pain that she could
even doubt of hope, may she hold out in this -
unheard of suffering. For she is surely anointed in
Thy spirit, for she is surely Thy high priest on
this earth, if she will understand that Thou lovest
without bounds those sons whom Thou dost
crown with thorns; for the thorn, steeped in
blood, is the everlasting'flower, and with it Thou
shalt renew the youth of all humanity. "
He concludes with a mystical analogy between
the history and the calling of the human race, and
the Divine pattern of Him Who came to save it.
[ " Christ ever dwelleth in thee, oh, humanity.
His blood is thine. His body is thy body. With
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 161
reats thee shall be what did befall to Him. He bore all
5 tiu thy vicissitudes within His flesh. To thee He
imnc manifested all thy hopes. Whence art thou born?
ffiid From a pure virgin womb, because from God's
: bad own thought in godly likeness. Whither dost thou
Ik go? To thy Father's city. By what road must
thou pass? Through pain and labour. And when
lane Christ on the summit of Mount Thabor was
mitv wrapped around with the eternal dawn, seest
: tie thou not what that sign to thee foretelleth?
each Thou, too, oh, human race, shalt be transfigured,
wit' Thou shalt leave at the foot of the dark moun-
>cial tains all that deceives, and all that is of sorrow;
,ne and thou shalt take spiritual knowledge with thee,
flir ^ and the eternal, unending love of hearts. And, in
, j the strength of these two holy powers, as Christ
ore - shalt thou ascend to globes of light. All sin shall
tie' be erased from thy forehead. Light as feathers'
shall thy wings be. Thy hands shalt thou stretch
j. . forth on the white air, and in it shalt thou poise--
as air thyself. "
? ' Having enunciated his dogma of faith, Krasinski
j proceeded to its natural sequence--the Psalm of
u - Hope. Here, for once, there is scarcely a trace of
jt the sadness, which overshadows the work of the
. t poet whose heart was broken with sorrow for his
t - nation.
"Long enough," thus opens the Psalm of Hope,
m "has the grief of the poets sounded the strings.
Now is it time to strike on a second string, on the
steel of deeds. "
The poem is instinct with life, freshness and
joy. The Revealer, the promised Paraclete, is nigh.
With Hjm will begin the third and spiritualized
M
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? POLAND
epoch. It is not the thrones or crowns who
will be the first to perceive the advent of the
Consoler, but she who, guiltless, is martyred.
Then neither the merchant's cupidity, nor the
executioner's hand, can prevail against Him Who
is to' change the universe.
"Oh, come more quickly, spring of the world!
Oh, come more quickly, God the Spirit! Fare-
well, oh, earth, with thy pain and with thy
mourning. The new Jerusalem is shining on the
vale of this old earth. The road was long, and the
toil heavy. A sea of tears and blood has flowed.
But the angelic time draws near. Poland! thy
grave was only as the cradle of the dawn.
"Tear aside the cloud of ages. Let us praise
the Lord Who comes. Strew ye palms and strew
ye psalms, flowers below and songs on high. Oh,
cast songs and cast ye flowers! Lo, He comes, the
Lord is coming. Now no more the Man of sorrows,
choosing thorns and nails and wounds "; but
"transfigured, from beyond the starred walls of
the universe, as the blue all-horizon," He comes.
"Oh, drink ye with your souls that heavenly
blue. Though you are tortured, you are tempted,
oh, believe ye in my hope. "
But neither here nor elsewhere in Krasinski's
teaching will he allow that hope to be anything
but conditional. It is to be proved in the fires of
action. It is to be secured only at the price of
individual and national self-discipline. "From
your faith shall your will be, from your will shall
your deed be. " And on his trumpet note, " It is
time to strike on the steel of deeds," the Psalm
of Hop concludes,
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 163
We know how the Polish Rising, projected in
the forties of the nineteenth century on democratic
lines, was pushed by Austrian machinations into a
different movement, and ended in the Galician'
massacres. Krasinski's piercingly clear political
acumen was never obscured by the mystic tend-
ency of his mind. He saw whither a class agitation
would be likely to lead a nation groaning as
was Poland under abnormal and intolerable con-
ditions. Before the disaster befell, trembling for
the moral danger that threatened his country,
Krasinski sent forth a passionate cry to those of
his fellow Poles, who were working a national'
rising as a social revolution, to stay before it was
too late. That warning is his Psalm oflLove. The
Psalm of Love is a plea to the human race, no less .
than to one people, to shun the works of bloodshed
and violence: the poet's attestation that one
only element can save a nation, namely, love.
"Carry your arms against hell. Slay the black
brood of demons. The guillotine and pillage are
the weapons of the human race in its infancy; rage,
the liberty, not of man, but of the beast. Now is
the time to take to oneself the toil of angels, the
time to cast off every stain, and by that very act
to conquer slavery. Destruction is not action.
There is but one truth, divine, fruitful in deed;
transfiguration through love. "
With his soul's whole strength, he pleads that the
Poland he loved to call holy, who he believed was
to prove to mankind that virtue and love are
stronger than brute force, must never, by stooping
to unworthiness and violence, lose her destined
vocation. .
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? 164
POLAND
"Who changeth sorrow into crime, who forgeth
fetters into knives, not into swords, cursed be he. "
"When geniuses have descended to this world,
they have led their cause by a different road. No
one of them was a dictator of the ages through
murder and the torture chamber. Rather, they
live in peril, in the end they die, but their victory
lasts for ever. Only the weak soul chooses butchery.
His name is Marius, his name is Robespierre. "
Then he bids such of his countrymen who
would sweep away the ancient nobility of Poland
to look upon what the latter have done for their
country. They have died for Poland in battle. They
have perished for her in Siberia. And who, asks
the poet, could we find who are faultless ? " Only
one, He only Who was man and God; and from
the sinner another man soars upward through
suffering, changed as the phoenix, and immortal. "
Search the world; the Alps, the waters of the
Mediterranean, the Spanish sierras, the snows of
Russia, the battlefields of France, where the
Polish nobles have sown "the seed of future
Poland, the god-like grain, their own blood;
and you are the children of that pain.
" They
lead that nation which, far from thrusting men
down to the pit, is to uplift them as she mounts
ever higher. But near her stands the tempter.
Evil thoughts "grow where there are chains. "
Siberia and the knout are nothing to the poison
sown by slavery. "But the corrupted spirit of a
nation, that only is the pain of pains " ; conscience
warped by a mass of suffering, reason confused by
the' wandering of perverted pride, crime repre-
levied as virtue, children taught to look on murder
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 165
as a glorious deed, the sister bidding the brother
take up the assassin's dagger, the native country
turned into a hell.
"Oh, my holy one, abjure these delusions, the
phantoms of an evil moment. Thou wilt not rid
thee of thy ancient faith, that he only can cut
through his chains who is anointed with the sign
of virtue, that to be a Pole upon this earth is to
live nobly and to God. "
The Anonymous Poet reads hope from the
very afflictions that thronged around his nation
on every side.
"My Poland! Holy Poland! Thou standest
on the threshold of thy victory. This is the last
term of thy sorrows. Let it be only seen that thou
art the eternal foe of evil. Then shall the chains of
death be shattered, and thou wilt be assumed to
heaven, because even in death thou wast with
God. "
In the final moment when death struggles with
life, when dying lips sob out the last accents of
doubt and lamentation:
"In the strength of thy martyrdom overcome
that moment, conquer that pain; and thou shalt
rise again, thou shalt rise as the queen of the
Slavonian fields. "
Then the poet turns to the ideal of Messianistic
longings; the celestial vision of a spiritualized
country.
"Let them who love thee gaze on thy face as
on the spring. Be the mistress who straightens
the crooked things of the world, the leader of
universal love. Blot out all sin, dry all tears, rule
over the world of souls, spurn the government
>
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? i66
POLAND
of flesh. Unpolluted, carry the breath of the
Lord. "
But that spiritual conquest is not reached yet.
The powers of darkness are still close at hand.
"Fling away your murderous weapons," is the
reiteration that tolls all through the concluding
verses of the psalm. "Against hell carry your
arms. / Slay the black brood of demons. " And, when
the word of the Lord shall thunder forth, " then
forward in the name of God" to the holy rising,
from which " God will not turn away His face. "
So ends the poem which Count Tarnowski
places among the world's splendid failures of
patriotic pleading,* written to save a nation, and
written in vain.
The catastrophe, greater even than what Kras-
inski had foretold, came to pass in 1846. Krasinski
( beheld the country, whose purity and suffering
. he had promised would confer upon her the
heralding of a new spiritual epoch, dragged down
to shame. His anguish brought him to the jjoint
of death. From that time he was prematurely
aged. Rent by the distress of his soul under which
his bodily frame came near to sinking, in the
agony of those days when Galicia was soaked in
blood spilt by her own children, he could still,
he did still, cling to the conviction of his heart.
He could still tell the beloved friend to whom he
poured out his thoughts that the idea would
conquer. f He could still, apparently a dying man,
tear from his pain words of consolation for his
* S. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
t Letters of Zygmunt Krmsinski. W >>\. I. To Constantine Gaszynski,
March 1st, 1846.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 167 /
people. And so he gave his nation her Psalmfof"
Grief. f
Slowacki, formerly Krasinski's friend, had, in a
poem of extraordinary artistic beauty, made~
mockery, not untouched by a personal gibe *at
the Anonymous Poet's private tragedy, of the
anti-revolutionary tendency of the Psalm of Love.
The Psalm of Grief is Krasinski's justification
against his brother-poet's attack. In grave and
dignified accents, with the generosity of one who(
Sassed over the bitterness of an individual wound,
Irasinski answers the poem that he himself
praised as an ornament to the Polish language.
Would, says he, that he had been the false prophet,
and that his challenger had been the true one\T
On the lines of the Psalm of Love, he refutes the
revolutionary tenets that he believed could only"
bring a nation to ruin. The spirit and the flesh
ever war, the idea against the brute beast, the
angel against the tiger. In the combat and con-
vulsion of the world, who shall redeem us? Who
shall bring harmony into a disordered chaos?
He Who knows neither the burden of the' body
nor the sickness of the soul: the Holy Ghost.
Beneath His rule blood will be shed no more. "In
the morning He waketh to hope the people
who slumber. " He shall make the very shadows
"as silver, till dawn becomes midday. "
Brotherly love will save those who are trembling
on the very brink of the abyss. Parted from each
other, they are damned. United, they are redeemed.
The radiance of the Holy Ghost conquers the
curse of centuries. The soul,ruled by Him, "shall
feel the love of toil and the courage of suffering. "
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? 168' / POLAND
She shall " lift men from the mire and hide their
shame. Unabased in the midst of vileness, loving
evef' in the midst of trials, her heart will become
as steel, and her eyes shall weep for every human
grief. " /Rhus through love and pain shall the soul
vwork her way to God. Even with the horror of
r what had recently befallen fresh upon him; when
v to keep hope alive, where every exterior event
incited to despair, meant a life and death struggle,
the^Anonymous Poet spoke a message of virility
i and life. He bade his people be the nation to rise
'-5* above moral stain, whose weapon shall not be the
i -' assassin's but Christ's, and who will' therefore
conquer in the power of Christ; whose triumph
'shall be commensurate with her anguish and' her
'. love. "Thus she riseth from the dead": are the
^ . last words of the Psalm of Grief. 'Ti '. ^
With the Psalm of Good WilU-tS^r-tr^-
- j ^ inski's Psalms of the Future close. I^hisj'^he noblest
^~ of Krasinski's poems, is-^e seal^f his life's ? work,
'the culmination of tfc^great prophetical poetry
"^of Poland. His own pain had taught Krasinski -his.
message to his nation. The Psalm of Good Will
breathes the sadness and majesty of a farewell to
his people, from one who had won to his haven
after suffering and struggle. In its long, sweeping
cadences the hymn reveals that the poet had
looked into the mysteries of grief only to rise
'victorious above them; that he had found in
-,Jcreath no^tirig^but resurrection^ His prayer is not
''~~for his fiaiion's glory, not for her material triumph,
but for thatiwhich will bring her both: for good
will. . 1
Now that Thy judgment has thundered in
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 169
heaven on the two thousand years that have past,
amidst that judgment, grant us, oh, Lord, that
by our holy deeds we may rise from death. " ,
This is the petition of which the poet cannot
weary, to which the stanzas of the Psalm modu-
late as into some grand closing chord.
"Thou hast given us all that Thou couldst'
give, oh, Lord," sings the son of the unhappiest
of nations. With the eyes of mystical devotion,
he reads in her past a history of love. " Thou hast
given us all that Thou couldst give, oh, Lord". ;
for, when thrust down from the land of the living
by dismen\berment, "Thou didst keep us who
were dead living in the field of war. We were not,
and we '*vere. . . . Thou hast given us all that
Thou oqulast give, oh, Lord; a pure life, there-
fore worthy of the cross, and the cross that brings
us to Thy stars; Earth Thou didst take from us>,
and send down heaven, and Thy heart shelters
us on every side. But our free will Thou hadst to
leave to us. Without ourselves, even Thou canst
not save us; for so hast Thou ennobled man and
every nation that Thy thought, suspended in
heaven, awaits the choice of man or nation for
their several roads. " " Thou hast*¥ us all that
Thou courdst give, oh, Lord "; tne example of
Jerusalem, " in whom Thy love for so long dwelt,"
and who is throneless and widowed -because she
desired revenge, and does not understand the
might of Christ's cross. "Thou hast given us all
that Thou couldst give, oh, Lord"; foj we have
seen how the works of death bring destruction,
not on those against whom they are directed,- but
on those who handle them. v
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? 170 POLAND
Here ends the tranquil and devout hymn of
praise. Behind Krasinski's promises, there is always
the reality of an exacting warfare. If Poland is to
be a. chosen nation, the harder must be her struggle
to justify her calling. The Psalm becomes a sup-
plication for victory in the battle.
"W. e are above the abyss, on the narrow
straits. Our wings are sprouting to the resurrec-
'don, our lips are parted for the cry of joy. From
the blue skies, as though from Thy bosom, golden
shafts of dawn, as though Thy sheltering arms, are
spreading from the heavens to us on earth below,
to take from our foreheads the load of agelong
sorrow. All is ready, and the east is all aflame, and
angels watching. "
But from the other side, heaving to our feet,
rises the darkness: "the pit, eternal death, where
Thou art not," where are all things evil. If we
turn^one backward glance towards it, one step to
meet it, then "the light of dawn will pale upon
our brows, Thy Son shall shed no tear for us, and
the Holy Spirit shall not console us. "
"Have mercy, Lord, defend us, be with us! "
We stand alone to face the final moment. None
may help us. Our destiny is in our own hands.
Then the name, with which "upon their lips
millions of Polish souls have gone to death," rises
in the poet's heart: the name of Mary. He sees
her, not with the rapture of his earlier vision in
Dawn, leading in triumph a host of warriors, but
as a suppliant, kneeling at the throne of her Son,
pleading for a suffering nation. He sees her above
the stars that turn to her in prayer, above suns
and the Milky Way, and behind her, weeping, are
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 'rj\
the souls of the Polish dead. Below is the pit,
echoing with the mocking laughter of hell. Its
winds roar in our ears, the foam of its waves
blinds our eyes by which it would drag us down to s,
death. "Oh, vain one, it seeth not what /is being
wrought on high. Oh, vain one, it seeth not that
its rage is nought when such a heart for us is
wrung. " And the poet then pours out his last
prayer for his people:
"Oh, Lord, Lord, then not for hope--as a
flower is it strewn : then not for the destruction of
our foes--their destruction dawns on to-morrow's
clouds: not for the weapons of rule--from the
tempests they will fall to us: not for any help--
Thou hast opened already the field of events
before us: but amidst the terrible convulsion of
these events, we beseech Thee only for a pure will
within ourselves, oh, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
"Oh, Thou most dear, hidden but visible
beyond the veils of the transparent worlds, Thou
present everywhere, immortal, holy! Thou Who
commandedst the being of man that, poor in
strength, and little in his birth, he should to an
angel grow by might of sacrifice; and to our
Polish nation didst ordain that she should lead
the nations into love and peace ! We beseech Thee,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we, suspended
between Thy kingdom and the pit, we beseech
Thee with our foreheads sunk to earth, our temples
bathed in the breathing of Thy spring, surrounded
with the wheels of shattered times and perishing
governments, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! we
beseech Thee create in us a pure heart, make
new our thoughts within us, root out from our
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005782621 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 172
POLAND
souls tie tares of sacrilegious falsehood, and give
us the gift, ^eternal among Thy gifts--give us
good will! " v
One . only word more remained to Krasinski to
speak to his people, and then his work was done.
In the thick of the terrible events of 1846, when,
weighed down by physical weakness and mental
agony, he could scarcely set pen to paper, he had
struggled fcV&end his nation the message she
needed. '
'. ' ? )h, pray for me to God," he wrote to Delfina
Potocka, as his spirit wrestled against a mind and
body too wearied to obey its bidding. "I feel
nothing egotistic in that desire. For Poland"--
whom even in a private letter he, calls by a feigned
name--" is/ bent beneath all the winds. She
implores, she implores for counsel. "* Dis'satisfiedr*'
with what he wrote; JCrasifiski did- taot publish
the poem in question till 1851, when it came out
und,er the. title ^Resurx^ctup^l It stands forth as his'
supreme ^ctory ov. er^' pessimism <<id d<<apair.
WhaxA he. asks; is this world but"a "cemetery of
ft^s, of blood and mire? This world is eternal
Golgotha to each. The spirit writhes in vain
against its pain. There is no halting place in the--
tempest of this life. Fate mocks us every moment.
Death is close ; and only far away, somewhere on 1
a later wave of ages, resurrection.
