No More Learning

And so this song of a nation's resurrection closes in a
rapture of rejoicing that we cannot but believe hymns
likewise the deliverance of the poet's own soul from the
dark and desolate places in which he had long
wandered. The terrible past is but a dream.
Long the power of that dream.
We believed it. We believed
In eternal pain and toil.
It was but the sanctuary's entrance;
But one step upon the stairway.
It was but the night of merit.
Human heart, where now thy shame?
Look into thyself, oh, gaze!
Where of old was bitter weeping,
Rage and cries and lamentation,
Lo, to-day of heaven's high mercy
Is the second house of God.
"Thus," sings the poet in the epilogue, "two exiles dreamed
in the dawning of a better dawn. What they felt in their hearts
they cast into these words. But the word alone is the empty
half" of the masterpieces of life. The only prayer worthy of
the Creator begins with a hymn, but knows no parting of the
thoughts with deeds. What it sings with its voice slowly it
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? 246 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
puts into form till it creates round about it the world of the real,
equal in beauty to the world of the ideal. Never, oh, never shall
I string more my harp. Other the roads that are open to us
now. Perish, my songs! Arise, my deeds!
"But thou, oh, loveliness I loved, the only sister of my life,
watch over me, be with me till I die as one small part in the
masterpiece of toils, till I die one verse in the hymn of sacrifice. "
Dawn appeared at the moment in the history of
Poland when she was the victim of an oppression that
sought to stamp out every vestige of her nationality;
when lethargy, despair, moral atrophy seemed all that
were left to her. In Dawn there came to her a call to
hope, a promise of resurrection, a cry of passionate love
for the country which within her boundaries it was for-
bidden to so much as name. Dawn gave the Poles a
motive for which to strive. 11 proved to them that death
was but the necessary condition of life. It pointed to a
future which should take away the sting from an intoler-
able present. The poem could only be smuggled at their
own risk by colporteurs into the country for which it
was written, read in secret under pain of imprisonment
and Siberia, and consigned to the flames or to some
safe hiding-place directly the reader had finished it.
Those who lived at the time have told us how they saw
men and women weeping tears of emotion as they
read1. Henceforth the unknown poet was enshrined in
the hearts of his people as their teacher and their con-
soler2.
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski. 2 Op. cit.
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? CHAPTER XI
THE PSALMS OF THE FUTURE: THE
PSALMS OF FAITH, OF HOPE, AND
OF LOVE
(1843-1847)
Krasinski's marriage with Elzbieta Branicka took place
in July, 1843, at Dresden. The portraits that remain
of this lady, as well as the accounts given by those who
knew her, testify to a beauty that was almost flawless.
Her face with its tranquil and noble dignity, of the type
known to us as Early Victorian at its best, is often
repeated in the pictures of Ary Scheffer, the warm friend
and admirer of herself and her husband, who was wont
to say that he had never seen any other woman who so
much realized his ideal of loveliness. Her character,
firm, but of a singular sweetness, was in keeping with
her appearance. Her intellectual gifts were many. Yet
Krasinski married her with death in his soul, with no
pretence of love. That love was all given to his
Beatrice, from whom his marriage meant parting.
"My mind is shattered," he wrote to Delphina before his
marriage, after which he was to live in his father's palace in
Poland, "and drags itself to thy feet, beseeching for pity. All
with thee, all by thee, all for thee. Peace, strength, greatness,
all are attainable for me, all possible, but not without thee.
Think of my life. For fate, Siberia: for surroundings, a hated
house: for occupation, slavery: for hope, death1. "
1 Letters to Delphina Potocka. Tygodnik Illustrowany, 1898.
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? 248 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
To Cieszkowski, in whom he confided so unreserved-
ly that he called him his confessor, and from whom he
appears to have received a good many home truths in
reply, he wrote in the March after his betrothal:
Do not tell me that my subjectiveness is increasing. My
subjectiveness is now in Eternity. . . I have transported it there
where the sorrowful find rest, where the oppressed breathe
once more, and I have united it on those heights with the
spirit which, of all the women I have known, is perhaps the
highest on the earth in our days--the spirit to whose upraising
I contributed a little. The thought that I saved that soul, that
I am ever saving it, and that together with her I will wake
some day to the consciousness of past days, at the end of the
age-long labour of humanity, is the most precious pearl given
me by my fate. Beyond her all the rest is loathing and
suffering. To you I am interpreting the most hidden secrets
of my heart, and I of you expect that you will utter nothing
in the least formal on a feeling so strong, so holy that it can
even on this earth, and that in the nineteenth century, cast upon
their knees two beings, and for one moment open before them
the universal kingdom of God1.
While all was thus dark around him, and when no
external circumstance justified hope for Poland, the
grief and despondency of his beloved Gaszynski, whom
he remembered as a youth full of life and spirit in the
days of their boyhood in Warsaw, wrung from him
these words in which he begged him to take comfort:
Believe, in spite of all visible events, that a better hour is
now near, a second spring in our lives, a restored youth. Poland
will give us back, will give us back what we have lost for her,
joy, fire, the heart's health2.
His honeymoon was not over when again to Ciesz-
kowski, who it appears counselled him to stamp out
his love for Delphina, he wrote from Poland:
You think that it is possible to overcome the heart, that it
is possible to cast love into oblivion. . . I am a man in a false
1 Letters to Cieszkowski. Aix-en-Provence, March 25, 1843.
2 Letters to Gaszynski. Grenoble, June 1, 1843.
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? The Psalms of the Future 249
position, a man who a hundred times a day curses the moment
when he did for his father what even the heavenly Father has
no right to exact. . . Solitude has become my only relief, my
only comfort.
"If God permits," he adds at the end of the letter, " and if
my very soul does not become utterly corroded, I shall finish
in the winter the first part of the Undivine"--the new drama
Krasinski was writing as an introduction to The Undivine
Comedy. "But inspiration is difficult. . . where outside the house
is oppression and ignominy, and inside the house despair1. "
Long ago Krasinski's imaginative genius had in
Henryk of The Undivine Comedy prefigured his own
character as a husband. For the first part of his married
life coldness and indifference, the punctilious politeness
of duty, devotion to the ideal woman of his heart, were
the only return he made to his wife's forbearing love.
She had married him with the knowledge of his affec-
tion for another woman: but, drawn to him by sympathy
for the tragedy of his life and by admiration for his
genius and lofty patriotism, she was, Count Tarnowski
surmises, too young and inexperienced at the age of
twenty-three to realize the strength of his passion and
the position that she was bringing upon herself8. She,
meanwhile, bore all in uncomplaining silence, concealing
her grief, and setting herself to the task of winning her
husband's heart by her unalterable patience and readi-
ness to meet his wishes. The first two years of their
marriage were spent in Poland in the house of Wincenty
Krasinski who, fondly attached to his daughter-in-law,
viewed with the strongest disapproval his son's attitude
towards her. The situation, says Count Tarnowski,
was disagreeable to both husband and wife; "disagree-
able also," he adds drily, "to those who would wish to
1 Letters to Cieszkowski. Wierzenica, Aug. 14, 1843.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 250 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
see Krasinski free from all reproach and who cannot
justify his conduct1. " While not attempting to palliate
Krasinski's failings, still it is only fair to take into
account that he had been morally forced into marriage
by his father against his every instinct, and that his
peculiar temperament and highly-strung genius were
galled to the utmost by bonds for which he had an
innate repulsion. The strain of embittered domestic
relations, the reproaches of conscience that with Kra-
sinski were always insistent, increased his grief. From
time to time he still unveiled his heart in passionate
and despairing lyrics to Delphina Potocka.
"Pray thou for me," so runs the poem that he wrote
to her the year after his marriage, which in an early
manuscript he called Last Lines:
when too early I die for the sins of my fathers and for my own
sin. Pray thou for me, that even in my grave grief eternal for
thee shall not torment me as hell. Pray thou for me that
before God in heaven after ages of ages I shall meet thee once
more, and there at least rest together with thee, for all to me
here is mourning and toil. Pray thou for me. In vain have I
lived, because that thy heart is now turning from me. Pray
thou for me. I faithfully loved thee: even as measureless
measure is without measure I loved thee. Pray thou for me,
for unhappy am I; straight is my heart, but crooked my lot.
Pray thou for me, and speak no reproach, for thou only art
my sister on earth. Pray thou for me, for no other soul's
prayer can now move my heart, but can only redouble the gall
of my grief. Pray thou for me. To thee I still cling, and on
this earth save thee I have nought, and besides thee of nought
beyond this world do I dream. Only I dream that with my
sad soul thine to the immortal shall flow one with mine. Then
pray thou for me, for thy brother am I.
1 Op. cit. Dr Kallenbach's monograph at present takes us no further
than the year 1838. We have no access to the family papers, and must
rely almost exclusively upon Count Tarnowski, related by marriage with
the Branicki family.
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? The Psalms of the Future 251
Yet in these years, while in his domestic relations
Krasinski fell far short of his higher self, his work for
his nation was reaching ever further to its noblest
realization. The discord between the ideal and reality
of the poet's surroundings could not shake his faith
in the truth of that ideal. In Warsaw he saw before
his eyes on all sides the terrorism of Russian Poland:
a generation brought up as a conquered people.
"The youth," he wrote to Soitan, "are in the most lament-
able condition. They are taught historical lies and blasphemies,
they are oppressed in every way, they are flogged for the
lightest offence, for the want of a button or for a white hand-
kerchief round their necks instead of the prescribed black
one; for the possession of any trifling book they are sent to
prison: in a word, those who are beginning life are far more
unhappy than those who are ending it. Decaying age is the
golden age on these plains. Hence there is among our youth
an unheard-of sadness full of unrest, and even of reproaches
against fate, or of irreligion. Their hearts are becoming
accustomed to complain even of God, for nobody teaches them
who God is, and in the name of religion and of the govern-
ment they continually experience indescribable torments. So
the present generation is growing up sad and godless, with
confused ideas, soured and embittered in the flower of their
years, but at the same time full of hatred and courage, but not
our courage of old which never calculated and was pure self-
sacrifice. Their courage is the energy of slaves, not of free and
highborn men. They do not mind the means if only the end
is acquired. This is the necessary result of a soul darkened. . .
by unhappiness and pain like slaves. And such a soul does
not know that it is never possible to reach by evil means a
great, holy, durable end. . . It is obvious that such a systematic
moral slaying of youth is a powerful means for the sapping
away of our strength. It is a hellish invention for the ruin, not
only of the present but of the future. To murder the child in
its mother's womb, that is its object.
"But, Adam," he goes on, "do not be saddened overmuch
on reading this picture which I have drawn here. This picture,
these details, are our martyrdom, are our test, but they are
not the end, not the final truth. It is necessary to pass through
this. Did not Christ in spite of His divinity experience the
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? 252
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
final doubt? Did He not pass through the bitterness of all
bitternesses? And so that He might rise again He had of
necessity not only to pass through death, but in the moment
of death itself to experience the most cruel of moral sufferings
. . . That last cry of His to the Father was at once the highest
degree of pain and merit, and therefore of sacrifice. Not
otherwise could He have emptied the chalice to its last drop,
and it was necessary to drink that last drop so that nothing
should remain. Then only shall death be changed into life,
pain into joy, defeat into victory: non est saltus in natura!
We, only looking at facts with the eyes of the body, might
often doubt; but we know that even doubt is only the highest
pain, and no proof, no truth, but on the contrary. . . a sign that
the hour of rebirth is near. . . It has rejoiced my soul that I
have been able to bring you some comfort, however transitory
--the one which you tell me is lying in your drawer \Dawn\
That, idea is my faith, my hope, my love. Without it I should
breathe my last, with it I live.
And do not think that our life
has passed and that we have not beheld the Divine Justice,
albeit we are glimpsing at its beginning. All for which I weep
here are our last tears. . . Without such a faith, without such an
idea, there is no life, and with it even death itself does not
cease to be life. Then how should we not believe?
"We must be sad because we are human beings, because
the flesh is weak, but at the same time we shall often rejoice,
because the spirit is willing though the flesh is weak, and God's
Spirit is within us and in ours and in our cause, which by no
accident of chance has befallen at the end of one of the epochs
of humanity and at the beginning of another. Our corpse is
the bridge of transition for humanity. When it shall reach the
other shore we shall rise living. And let us eternally know
and feel that where there is hellish injustice, there the Divine
Justice must manifest itself; where men have not known how
to love, there God shall love. Otherwise the universum would
break. One God and one law and one truth! I enclose for
you here a Psalm written in that faith, in that hope, in that
love [the Psalm of Hope]1. "
This letter speaks for itself as to the nature of the
Anonymous Poet's apostolate. It was for this genera-
tion of young Poles, exposed to the fearful perils which
1 Letters to Sot tan. May 12, 17, 1844.
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? The Psalms of the Future 253
he here describes, that Krasinski wrote Dawn and was
now writing the Psalms of the Future.
It is noticeable that, with the exception perhaps of
his short lyrics, Krasinski never wrote for the pure
artistic joy of creation. He wrote for the sake of his
country, and only when she had need of his words. N
Thus it was that, although he had declared his intention y
in the epilogue to Dawn never to write again, but to
devote himself exclusively to action, he found himself
confronted with a great national crisis when the only
way in which he could warn his nation was by his song:
and thus rose the Psalms of the Future.
The Psalms of the Future were, as Dr Kleiner
points out to us, a complete departure from the method
of Krasinski's former work1. The Undivine Comedy and
Iridion were appeals to his fellow-countrymen under
allegorical or veiled forms. Dawn is a rapture of
spiritualized patriotism where lights of aheavenly mystic
country play as in the poetry of the Hebrew prophets.
The Psalms are the concrete and practical development
of Krasinski's system, in which he employs the instru-
ment of poetic form because it was the one most adapted
to compel hearing and conviction upon those to whom
they were spoken. With the culmination of his idea,
says again Dr Kleiner, Krasinski's language and
meaning become simplified: and the same interpreter
of the Anonymous Poet lays emphasis on the somewhat
curious fact that of the three great Polish mystic poets,
Krasinski, in contrast to Mickiewicz and Stowacki,
was the only one who brought the national mysticism
down to a lucidity that any mind could grasp2.
1 J. Kleiner, History of the Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Ibid.
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? 254 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
The first three Psalms, and more especially the first
in point of time though placed as the third in the
series, the Psalm of Love, differ also from the
previous writings of Krasinski inasmuch as they are
directed to meet a given occasion. During Krasinski's
comparatively long stay in the Kingdom of Poland
after his marriage he was closely watching the political
and moral conditions under which the youth of his
nation were growing up, and which were goading a
certain party among them into a revolution, not of a
merely national, but of a socialistic and even a Jacobin
nature. A young Pole, whose name Krasinski's friend,
from whom we have these particulars, does not give,
and who was already dead when they were written, came
to Krasinski with the secret that a new rising was
being prepared, which the lower classes were to be
induced to join by the promise of equality of lands and
rights, and of a popular government when the move-
ment should have succeeded1. The youth begged
Krasinski to throw in his adherence with the party.
Krasinski refused; and this was not merely because he
was imbued with aristocratic tendencies and because,
his sympathies being with his own order, he had small
belief in the ruling capabilities of the populace. His
clear political acumen was not at fault. He saw that
the time in Poland was not at that moment ripe for any
democratic propaganda. The conditions in an oppressed
country were too abnormal for a class agitation to be
productive of anything except anarchy. Krasinski was
parted by only two generations from the French Re-
volution: and when he heard that the Polish democratic
1 St. Matachowski, Short Sketch of the Life and Writings of Zygmunt
Krasinski. See St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The Psalms of the Future 255
leaders were prepared to have recourse to terrorism if
necessary he foresaw consequences far beyond what
the promoters of the rising had in view. In 1844 a
Polish exile, Henry-k-Xamienski, brought out a work
entitled: Life-giving Truths for the Polish Nation by
Filaret Prawdoski--the latter word being derived
from the Polish for truth, Prawda. On a different line
to Krasinski's he too called Poland to the leadership of
nations; but one that was to be acquired by a rising of
every class in the land. This movement was to link
itself to a great social revolution. The revolution should
be bloodless if possible, but were bloodshed and violence
to be indispensable they must be employed. "We will
serve the revolution without regard as to whether it
shall be compelled to unfurl the white or the red flag1. "
The redness of Kamienski's views obscured much that
was noble in his outlook and alienated numbers of
Poles who otherwise would have rallied to his side2.
In such language sown broadcast among a people per-
secuted and deprived of all stable landmarks Krasinski
saw the gravest peril to Poland.
Appalled then by the danger that was approaching
his country, the Anonymous Poet sent forth an im-
passioned entreaty to his countrymen in the only form
that could reach them. He wrote his Psalm of Love.
But in order that its lessons should more deeply
penetrate to the hearts of his compatriots he wrote the
Psalm ofTaithandihePsalmofJLope as its introduction,
and as the recapitulation of the theories on which the
point of his warning depended3. They were all three
1 Life-giving Truths for the Polish Nation, by Filaret Prawdoski,
Brussels, 1844 (Polish).
2 J. Kleiner, History of the Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 256 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
published simultaneously in 1845 under the pseudonym
Spiridion Prawdzicki, the name Spiridion taken from
George Sand's Spiridion, which treats of Krasinski's
favourite ideas on the new epoch, and the second name
chosen as a challenge to that of Kamienski.
In the Psalm of Faith Krasinski enunciates his act
of faith in the personality of God, in the life of the soul,
in the life of his nation and of the human race.
Appreciations of style are matters which a foreign
writer would do well to leave to native critics: and so
we point to the emphasis that Count Tarnowski lays
upon the perfect harmony that in the Psalm of Faith
reigns between word and matter, the clearness and
conciseness, often lacking in Krasinski's work, with
which a simple diction treats of sublime things1. The
opening of the Psalm, the fine description of the soul's
pilgrimage to its highest good, is significant of the far
road on which Krasinski had travelled since, in doubt
and distress, he sang a similar theme in The Son of
Darkness.
My soul2 and my body are only two wings with which the
meshes of time and of space are cut by my spirit in its flight to
the heights. Worn out by time and by a thousand trials they
must fall--but the spirit dies not, though men call this death.
It casts off the wings that are withered and taketh on fresh,
and folded in these wakes to life once again: and this do we
call the hour of its birth. And my spirit takes to itself un-
wearied wings, and with them soars once again--but now
to a higher land. Thus ever higher it mounts to the Lord.
Behind it are twilight gulfs of the past. Before it wide
plains of the all measureless. Before it the universe--time,
endless space, storeys of milky ways and days of thousand
years. And further, higher, o'er them and beyond them He
Who is all and Who embraceth all, Creator Spirit of the stars,
1 Op. tit.
2 Krasinski here uses the word "soul" not in its ordinary significance
but rather as meaning the mind.
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? The Psalms of the Future 257
of angels and of man, the end and the beginning of heaven
and of earth, He Who for ever higher, further is, not to be
reached, flaming o'er all, rest and together quickening strength,
light of the Most High Spirit-Sun of spirits.
To Him do I ever travel. Thither I first must go through
the toils of hell, through purgatorial trial, till I begin to put
me on body and soul more radiant and ascend to the other
world: to the world that from the ages is called the globe of
heaven; and there no longer need I swoons of death or waking
from the grave to ascend more high. For there is life eternal,
life that ceaseth not. The grave and cradle must be here
below upon this earth wherein the spirit's light is only dawn:
but for the angels death shall never be. The future and the
past with piercing eyes they see and know.
The desire of the spirit that has reached this angelic
life is God: "desire without measure that grows with
each minute, love without bounds, that is life without
end. "
He is the centre of creation bound with one chain, He,
Being, Mind and Life, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And all
of us and everywhere we are fashioned in His image and, by
degrees to ever higher possession ascending, we must immortal
live, with Him together live, born of His bosom, live in His
eternity. And even as He created us, so we must still create,
and from within us draw out worlds to weave to Him, as He
did weave for us, vesture of visible things; and in as far as
we can who are poor, we must with the lowliness of angels
give back to Thee what Thou didst give us of Thy mercy,
Lord, and yet be able never, never, to give back aught to
Thee, and thus eternally live in Thee by eternal love.
Thus for the reciprocal relation of God with man. In
the light of the Krasinskian theory on the application
of individual mysticism to that of nationality and the
human race, it is but one step to the conclusion of the
Psalm of Faith. For: "the history of mankind is the
school of the soul. " The human race is advancing to
the day of judgment and to the transfiguration of
humanity.
G.
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? 258 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
The stairs that lead us to that day are the nations conceived
in Thy grace. In each of them lives some deep thought that
is the breath sent down upon them from Thy breast, and from
that time is for the nation its predestined calling. And beyond
all others some are chosen to combat for Thy beauty on this
earth and, for long years, carrying the cross with its bleeding
trail, to win by conflict man's higher thought of Thee, a greater
love and greater brotherhood in barter for the murderer's knife
planted within their breast.
Such a one, oh, God, is Thy Polish nation. Though the
world giveth her such pain that she might despair of hope,
may she stand steadfast through unheard-of suffering, for, of a
truth, she is Thy chaplain on this earth if she is not ashamed
of the crown of thorns, if she will understand that Thou lovest
without measure those sons whom Thou dost crown with
thorns: for the thorn imbrued in blood is the everlasting flower,
with which Thou shalt renew the youth of all humanity.
Christ ever dwelleth in thee, oh, humanity. In thy breast
He lives, He is of thy lot a guest. His blood is thine, His
body is thy body. To thee it shall befall what did befall to
Him. All thy vicissitudes He carried in his flesh. To thee He
manifested all thy hopes. Whence art thou born? From a
pure virgin womb, because from God's own thought in godly
likeness. Whither dost thou go? To thy Father's city. By
what road must thou pass? Through pain and toil. And when
Christ on the summit of Mount Thabor was wrapt around with
the eternal dawn, seest thou not what that sign to thee fore-
telleth? Before thy earthly lot shall be in full accomplished,
thou too, oh, human race, shalt be transfigured. Thou shalt
leave at the foot of the dark mountains all that deceives and
all that is of sorrow: and thou shalt take spiritual knowledge
with thee, and the eternal, unending love of hearts. And in the
strength of these two hallowed powers like Christ shalt thou
ascend to globes of light. All sin shall from thy brow be wiped
away; as lightly moving wings thy members be. Thy hands
shalt thou stretch forth to the white air, and in it thou shalt
poise--as air thyself.
The following Psalm, the Psalm of Hope, plays on
a different note to that of the four other Psalms. It
is a cry of triumphant gladness. In his Life-giving
Truths Kamienski had called upon a new poet of hope
to appear. "Arise, singer of the future! We await thee
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? The Psalms of the Future 259
with undeceived hope, for thou must show thyself, for
the life-givingstrengthof Poland shall bring thee forth1. "
Elegies and lamentations were according to him to be
no more heard. Krasinski took up the challenge, and
he begins and ends his Psalm of Hope with the words:
Long enough, long enough, has the grief of poets rung upon
the strings. Now is it time to strike on a second string, on the
steel of deed.
For once sorrow is absent from this one of Kra-
sinski's poems. He sees close at hand the advent of the
Paraclete that shall restore a corrupted world and right
all wrong.
I say unto you He is not far, He, the Comforter promised
ages since. Nor thrones nor crowns shall be the first to see
Thee in the heavens. But the innocent martyr shall, oh, Spirit,
see Thee. Nor schemes of merchants nor the executioner's
hand can prevail against the truth. Oh, come quicker, spring
of the world! Oh, come quicker, God the Spirit! Surely, like
Christ caught to heaven, we shall ascend to the paradise of
love. Surely we are rising ever higher through the ages to the
final resurrection. From the spring unto the spring, ever to
the spring, the heavenly flower which is our soul is growing,
we all are ever growing unto Thee.
Then shall the eternal Gospel, reiterates the poet,
reign over the earth when, after long suffering, it
reaches its rest.
Farewell, earth, with pain and anguish! A new Jerusalem
glitters on the vale of the old earth. Long the road, the toil
was heavy, flowed a sea of blood and tears, but the angelic age
draws near. 7
Poland, Poland, thy grave was only the cradle of the new
dawn, only one little moment in the eternity where was con-
ceived the divine day.
Let us praise the Lord Who comes. Cast ye palms and
cast ye psalms--flowers below and songs on high. Oh, cast
1 H. Kamienski, Life-giving Truths for the Polish Nation. .
17--2
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